Editorial Cartooning Is In Danger

At a time when the world needs new ways to connect, there are fewer opportunities for people whose life’s work is to help us do precisely that.

This article was originally published in Persuasion.

Originally published as a letter to the editor in The New York Times, after they announce they would not run cartoons anymore

I have been a cartoonist all my life. I began drawing when I was 7 years old, and my love of cartoons began when I realized I could make others smile with my pen. But it was the chaos of America in the 1960s and 1970s that made me want to turn to drawing editorial cartoons. Because of the power of visuals to connect, cartoons help us see the world in ways that words alone cannot, and editorial cartoons often distill core issues and point up our common humanity. I wanted to help.

One cartoonist who was my original inspiration was Herblock of The Washington Post, my hometown newspaper. I eventually found a home at The New Yorker, and for decades I felt as though my editorial cartoons, and those of my fellow artists, were respected and even loved. The fact that the Pulitzer Prize Board established a category for editorial cartooning in 1922, just five years after the launch of the prize program, has lent legitimacy to our art.

So when the Pulitzer board declined this year to name a winner of the cartooning prize — a year…