Editorial cartoons and illustration are fairly niche topics—or so I once thought. On Jan. 3, cartoonist Ann Telnaes published Why I’m quitting the Washington Post on her Substack. It detailed how the paper—owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who will be attending Donald Trump’s second inauguration—rejected her cartoon of Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse worshipping at the president-elect’s feet with bags of money. The next day, the story was international news.
Paradoxically, in the year 2025, editorial cartooning was back on the front page. Washington Post Opinion editor David Shipley released a statement that the paper had killed Telnaes’s cartoon to avoid redundancy because they had just published a column on the same topic and had another in the hopper. But ultimately, in rejecting the piece, the Post seemingly underscored the point at the heart of it—and brought it to more eyes than the paper ever could have reached on its own. It immediately became a stand-in for much bigger conversations around media ownership, American oligarchs, objectivity and myriad subjects beyond—including, of course, the role of the editorial cartoon in 2025.
To probe just that, we arranged a Zoom roundtable with a trio of some of the best political artists and illustrators working today: Pulitzer Prize winner Barry Blitt, Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Ohman, and Pulitzer finalist and Herblock Prize winner Jen Sorensen.
Our conversation proved to be insightful, stirring and at times depressing, but ultimately honest. Collectively, not unlike the best editorial cartoons.
Let’s start with what happened with Ann Telnaes, who I was hoping would be able to join us today. When you heard about the Washington Post incident, what did you each make of it?
Jack Ohman: I’ll go first because I’m voluble. I wasn’t particularly surprised because I had heard some rumblings from her over the years about issues that she was having there. I read [former WaPo editor] Marty Baron’s memoir a couple months ago, and I was really surprised to learn that he really actually liked Bezos, and Bezos kind of let him do what he wanted to do. [As a cartoonist,] your relationship with your editor is tough anyway because they really don’t do what we do. I also happen to be a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and so it’s a lot easier for me to relate to my editor about columns on a lot of levels than it is for me to relate to him about cartoons, or for him to relate to me. And I love my editor at the Chronicle.
So when Ann went out like that, I was surprised by how it went down because she did it in a way that maximized the effect. And in some ways, I think it was a galvanizing moment for American editorial cartooning. I talked to her a couple days ago. What I said to her was basically, “Congratulations. You’re president of the editorial cartoonists of the United States now.” And she is, and she’s almost ideally the public face of what’s going on in American editorial cartooning.
What do you think, Jen and Barry?
Jen Sorensen: I found out from a cartoonist friend of mine, who sent me an email shortly after it happened, and my response to her was just, “Wow, that’s big news.” So my first thought was that this was in keeping with some recent developments, with, say, the L.A. Times [owner] refusing to endorse [Kamala Harris], and The Washington Post basically having to pull their endorsement. To me, it was this ominous continuation of that pattern.
Now, I’ve been an editor, and so I’m actually sympathetic to the plight of editors, but I did not buy the explanation of why the cartoon was killed. To me, the idea that they had too many columns already making this argument—well, I mean, for one thing, that happens all the time, and often a publication will actually want a cartoon to complement the column. I don’t know if that’s the case here, but at the very least, you would think an editor would say, “OK, well, we can just hold this till next week. Can you give us something else this week because of the timing?” And that would seem understandable to me. But in a way, I think this sounded like kind of a slippery rationalization.
Ohman: Also, I had been deputy Opinion editor of The Sacramento Bee twice, and I’ve been acting editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee. Now, I got to edit myself, and so I was a great editor for me. [Laughter.] As usual, Jen raises several excellent points, and I’m not going to over-talk it, but that explanation that Dave Shipley gave about, “Well, we’ve had other columns on the same subject” . . . I’m sorry, I’ve been in this business for 47 years or something, and I’ve never one time had that excuse. It’s always, “you’ve gone too far,” “people aren’t going to get that,” “it’s too obscure.” I mean, there are a lot of good reasons to kill a cartoon. That was not one.
Barry Blitt: I will say that I wasn’t surprised. It seems like everything seems to be going downhill for editorial cartoonists. And I’m not sure I am an editorial cartoonist myself. I’m more of a freelance animal. But I sure see it happening among editorial cartoonists.
As far as a freelance illustrator/cartoonist, I’m used to having stuff killed constantly, so you sort of take it for granted and are used to being treated that way, but it’s pretty ugly to see it happen to Ann and to lots of others. So it seems like a dark time for media in general, but particularly editorial cartoonists.
Have any of you ever dealt with incidents similar to Ann’s in your careers?
Ohman: Oh God, yes. I mean, I’ve worked on five daily newspapers. I’ve been in national syndication with four different syndicates. The only time I ever had a cartoon killed that I can remember that had been executed was with Tribune Content Agency, like 13, 14 years ago, and I don’t even remember what it was about. And I thought that maybe they had a substitute editor in that day, and, again, they just weren’t used to working with editorial cartoonists.
Now, I’ve certainly brought in roughs. I show the Chronicle every rough, and I’ve never had anything killed at the Chronicle. I’ve certainly had conversations with my editor about pencil roughs. That’s totally fair game. My question to the Post would be, did you do anything to try to mitigate this? Did you have a conversation—is it just, “I’m not going to be able to do billionaires anymore?”
I can tell you this story about what happened to me at The Columbus Dispatch, where the publisher, who’s now gone, just routinely handed down orders that I wasn’t to comment on X, Y, or Z. And I was at a conservative Republican newspaper back when conservative Republican newspapers would have liberal cartoonists. I mean, most newspapers were conservative back when I started, honestly. They used to call it the one-party press, and it wasn’t the Democratic Party. . . .
Once they start putting down markers, what they do is they freeze you up. And that’s the worst thing you can do to a cartoonist.
Do you all feel that incidents like Ann’s are anomalies, or do you think this is something that we’re going to be seeing more and more going forward?
Blitt: More and more, if you’re asking me. I think it’s not heading to a good place. And, certainly, I’ve had lots of things killed after I’ve been told to go ahead with them.
Ohman: Oh, really?
Blitt: Yeah.
Ohman: Wow. At The New Yorker?
Blitt: Yeah, at The New Yorker. I finished a cover about Pope Benedict with his dirty laundry. He was standing on a grate like Marilyn Monroe with his robes showing his dirty laundry, and that was killed at the last second. And I had a couple of terrorists on a plane with Mentos and Diet Coke that they got nervous about and didn’t run that. I think quite a few, actually. That happens routinely illustration-wise.
Sorensen: I think my situation is a little bit different in that I got my start in the alt weeklies, and I’m mostly published either in, say, progressive magazines or websites, and mostly alternative media, not mainstream media, with the exception of Politico, sometimes.
So, in my case, I’ve actually had an incredible amount of freedom to draw pretty much whatever I want. And the only things that ever came close to this were a couple pro-vaccination cartoons that one website had some issues with. And then I guess there was one cartoon that sort of very gently made fun of racism in policing, and I think I eventually lost a client in a fairly Republican-leaning area because of that.
But aside from those incidents, I would say I almost never have an issue with editors. They just publish what I draw, for the most part.
How has the field changed since you all started out?
Sorensen: The percentage of income that I make from the web relative to print has changed dramatically. I mean, I started out in papers like The Village Voice and other alt-weeklies, and I still actually am in quite a few of them, but I was all print at first. I guess this was the early 2000s. And then, very gradually over time, there were websites like Daily Kos and The Nib and GoComics, these sites that started paying for cartoons.
And then like so many cartoonists now, I’ve started a subscription service with a few different options for people to subscribe, and that has really picked up the slack for me and allowed me to keep going.
Ohman: I started in daily newspapers in 1978 at The Minnesota Daily, the student paper at the University of Minnesota, which was a full-blown news operation, had a million dollar a year budget back then, and my first job was on The Columbus Dispatch. And when I started in cartooning [. . .] there was no internet, there was no CNN, there was no MSNBC, there was no cable television to speak of, except on a very small scale. And so at one time, I was one of the most widely read political cartoonists in the United States. I had almost 400 clients and I was 20 years old.
I don’t think that editors in general were particularly interested in really hard-hitting political cartoon commentary over most newspapers, and once the internet started to emerge in the late ’90s, at least from my end, cartoonists like Jen and Matt Bors and a couple other folks like that, they had a lot more running room in terms of their ability to comment on things.
One of the things that I was very cognizant of when I started in cartooning was, frankly, some of the weakest cartoonists were getting a hell of a lot of play because they would kind of do pretty drawings that really didn’t take much of a position, or they would take obvious positions on things. So I don’t think editorial cartooning was particularly effective in a lot of ways. [Now,] let’s go back to Ann. She’s very smash-mouth. She’s not a humorist. I wrote a couple of days ago in my Substack, which is now over 40% of my income, that she’s not somebody who’s going to just kind of do a little punchline and step away from the vehicle. You would think that The Washington Post would want that level of candor and commentary. I don’t know what they want now.
How would you all describe the financial side of cartooning in 2025?
Blitt: Shit. [Laughter.] I mean, I feel a bit like a fish out of water here because I’m really not a regular editorial cartoonist, but just speaking as an illustrator, I’m getting a quarter of what I might’ve got for something 15 years ago. It’s kind of alarming. I’d imagine it’s the same all around.
Sorensen: Hardly any cost of living raises at all in my entire career, 20-plus years. I guess there are many times throughout my career that I thought it was all about to end. The Great Recession, I thought I had maybe a year left, and, I mean, yeah, things are terrible now. I weirdly find [that] my work somehow is just getting out there more. And so through subscribers, I would say, I’m able to make a modest living. Not a great living. [Laughs.] And going forward, I don’t feel great about the future of publications, and I’m wondering if even more clients are going to be either intimidated or put out of business.
Ohman: I’m probably the one on the call here who’s an actual syndicated cartoonist in the sense of traditional rules and regulations. Until maybe 15 years ago, I was routinely making a quarter of a million dollars a year, sometimes a little less, but right in there, between all the things, with syndication and salary. When I started in national syndication, when I took over Jeff MacNelly’s client list, my first check was for $13,000. That’s a monthly check.
Sorensen: Oh my God.
Ohman: I’ve lived in nice homes, I’ve had three cars, I’ve had beach houses, I mean, you name it. And I wasn’t the only one. There were probably 10, 15 cartoonists who did what I did, maybe more. And so that’s all gone. Goodbye to all that. And so now thank God for Substack. Well, thank God for my working wife, because I ain’t making a quarter of a million dollars a year anymore. I mean, I won the Pulitzer Prize and I’m busking on a corner, and that feels really weird to me now.
This may be a dark question, but—
Ohman: Oh, what was the last one? [Laughter.]
Looking ahead, how do you see the market for younger folks entering the field of editorial illustration and cartooning today?
Blitt: I mean, I will hear from young illustrators or cartoonists asking how they get their foot in the door or how they contact art directors, and I have no idea how anyone does it these days. I used to go visit an art director, and they would see me and I’d bring my portfolio in and they’d look through it. I hate to talk about how things used to be, but I know it’s nothing like that now.
Do you all have any favorite newer cartoonists or illustrators these days?
Ohman: Jen Sorensen.
Blitt: Jen Sorensen.
Sorensen: Well, thank you. I’m sure you’re all familiar with The Nib that used to run a lot of younger cartoonists, and most of us were multi-panel and sort of coming from either a web comics background or maybe an underground comics background, which is sort of where I came from. But now that The Nib is defunct, I’m not seeing as many younger, newer cartoonists doing editorial cartoons. And I wouldn’t even know where to start now.
Had things gone differently [in the mainstream media], and maybe been a little more accepting of the next generation, you would probably have your next Garry Trudeau or you’d be seeing a lot more younger voices out there. But the door kind of closed in our faces, and I’m very jealous of some of these opportunities you guys have had. [Laughs.] But I know we’re all suffering now.
Ohman: Now the younger cartoonists who are really doing what we’re doing are Jen, Adam Zyglis, who’s early 40s maybe, and [. . .] God, I’m one of the younger cartoonists, and I’m 64 years old, and I mean, that’s crazy. A lot of the people that you see regularly reprinted are 70 years old. Why would [young artists] go into this? They’re going to go to CalArts and they’re going to learn animation or. . . . I’ve seen some brilliant young graphic novelists. That’s where the future is: book publishing.
If you were to look into a crystal ball at the future of editorial cartooning and illustration, is it all grim? Or do you think there’s a way that people can break through all these barriers?
Ohman: I’m doing well on Substack. I could see where I could get to six figures on Substack this year, honestly. That’s not working at the bait shop money. It requires a lot of effort. And I used to work a standard kind of 40-hour work week. I’m working 50 to 55 hours a week.
And so I could see a time, sooner rather than later, where I just walk away from editorial cartooning. I mean, I’m still in national syndication . . . but I could see where the national syndication model could implode, because Gannett got rid of Opinion—there are other groups that are getting rid of Opinion—and if you don’t have an Opinion page, you don’t have editorial cartoons.
Sorensen: Before I forget, one thing I wanted to say about this model where you have direct subscribers, I mean, it’s kind of great and it’s a lot of fun—you have a lot of freedom—and it’s been very rewarding to get that positive feedback from readers. And it really is like a little community that keeps you going. But in the long run, we really need someone to seriously fund new media enterprises. A democracy-loving billionaire needs to just dump a bunch of money into a fund, no strings attached, and let some smart people run it. I would even put it somewhere maybe not on a coast. Start it up in Denver or Minneapolis or somewhere in the middle of the country.
If this country’s ever, ever going to overcome its broken media and, frankly, its sort of corrupt media now that it seems to be controlled by oligarchs, you have to fund new media.
Does it seem like the political cycle is more intense than it ever has been in terms of the way it bleeds over into your work?
Ohman: Absolutely. I mean, everything’s on the line. Democracy’s on the line, journalism’s on the line, free speech is on the line. And ABC News just wrote a check to Donald Trump, who doesn’t need a check, for $15 million dollars. So what’s to stop them from suing me?
To that end, do you all feel threatened by what Trump could do?
Blitt: I do. I mean, I’m Canadian. I have dual citizenship and—
Ohman: Will you adopt me, Barry?
Blitt: We could talk. [Laughter.]
On a painfully broad note, what do you think the role of editorial cartooning and illustration is today—or should be—in this country?
Sorensen: These days, I kind of feel more like I’m keeping the flame alive, and most people want to hear they’re not alone. And I feel like the information environment is so polluted now with slop that people really just need to hear something that is grounded in reality and good journalism.
Blitt: I agree. I mean, there are still some people who think that political cartoons are there to change people’s minds, and I just don’t see that at all, or don’t even understand that at all. Do you feel that?
Sorensen: It’s very difficult to change people’s minds. But I will say that what interests me now is not so much drawing caricatures of powerful figures—even though it’s an important thing to do, criticize these people—but I’m sort of more intellectually interested in how we got to this point. The ideas and the language and the way truth itself has been hacked. That at least interests me, and so it gives me something to talk about that I enjoy talking about. And I think there’s something to be said for taking a step back and looking at the big picture and trying to understand what’s going on. I don’t see a lot of people doing that, and so that’s what I enjoy doing.
Ohman: I have to say that I saw my mission quite differently when I started in 1980 in national syndication. I thought it was a cool thing to do. I got to see it more as a mission and a calling when I got to be about 40.
When you stand up for democracy, that feels like you’re radicalized, which is ridiculous. So I feel that I very much have a sense of mission about my work and how it’s perceived. And I can tell you that my little Substack group of 4,200 subscribers, they tell me constantly with each comment that they leave underneath a column or a cartoon, that I am important to them, that I help them get through this, that I am able to articulate feelings that they have that they can’t articulate for themselves. And so I see that I do have a mission here, and I felt that for very much the duration of the [first] Trump administration. And so I feel like it’s a calling for me, it’s a vocation for me. It’s not just a job anymore.
Blitt: Certainly not just a job. I mean, it feels like it needs to be done. Philip Roth wrote a satire of the Nixon years, and he was interviewed in The Atlantic. This is in the ’70s. He wrote what he felt the point of political satire was, and it’s a great thing to read. He felt it was a way of organizing his thoughts. It was a literary exercise more than anything else. I’m not sure how that relates necessarily to political cartooning—
Is there any semblance of that in terms of how you’re internalizing and processing things through the work that you do?
Blitt: Absolutely. I mean, even when Ann was . . . when that went down and she quit, that just filled me with rage and outrage. I think it was on a Sunday that I heard about it, but I felt I had to draw some little thing about it. To deal with it, I had to draw something. And I guess that’s basically the way it goes. There’s so much to be outraged about, and it’s a way to process it.
Sorensen: I mean, every single week, the cartoon is kind of an emotional ordeal where suddenly you just have to wallow in this awfulness. And I was actually just talking to my husband about this—just every week it’s kind of like a roller coaster where you just have to plunge into it. And, I mean, it is actually kind of stressful and—
Blitt: I agree.
Sorensen: Psychologically difficult. You sort of come out of it somewhat when you turn in the cartoon, but it’s hard to do it every single week. I mean, it does kind of take a toll.
That’s why I was wondering how you all were feeling when Trump won—if you felt like you had the endurance to do four more years of this.
Blitt: No. [Laughter.]
This conversation has been edited for clarity and condensed for space.
