Hello darkness, my old friend: the Ann Telnaes resignation and the late, formerly great Washington Post

What a travesty.

When I was starting off in editorial cartooning in 1980, one of early career goals was to be regularly reprinted in The Washington Post. Ultimately, I was hoping to work there.

I did, kind of, as a contractor from 2017-2023.

My parents then lived in the manicured wilds of suburban Springfield, Virginia, and were Post subscribers. When I was a kid, we didn’t get the Post. We got the Evening Star, the afternoon paper. It was this newspaper that I scoured the box scores for the exploits—or lack of same—of the hapless—a word specifically invented invented for—the incompetent but adorable Washington Senators, a perennial cellar dweller , whose roommates included the Cleveland Indians (then) and other baseball trilobites that lived under rocks and in caves in the dark.

Baseball Dies in the Darkness.

I also would check out the editorial cartoons of the long-gone Gib Crockett, who was earnest in the way that most cartoonists were back then. You know, Nixon standing on crumbling cliffs labeled “Inflationary Spiral” and stuff like that.

Then Watergate happened.

Cartoons became more cool and relevant thanks to Pat Oliphant, Jeff MacNelly, Paul Conrad, Mike Peters, and about ten other top performers in the field.

When my parents moved back to DC from Minnesota, they got the Post, featuring the journalism giants like Ben Bradlee, David S. Broder, George F. Will, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Haynes Johnson, Meg Greenfield, Phil Geyelin, and dozens of others I’ll remember very soon in the shower, I hope. I even met and became acquainted with some of them, including the great cartoonist Herblock. This was life-altering stuff.

“Dave Broder knows who I am!” I’d think, patting myself on the back for my journalism chops at age 20.

One morning, Mom and Dad called me on March 22, 1980, which was a Saturday.

“You had a cartoon in the Post!”

Each Saturday morning thereafter, my folks would call me. There was no internet. . Just Bell System Trimline phones that got hot because of the light in the handset. We also had a rotary dial phone, just to keep it real.

We would talk every week.

“You’re in the Post!”

JOY.

“You weren't in the Post.”

FAILURE.

As my career grew, I was in the Post quite a bit. It was surreal to me to see my little effort next to legendary names.

Any cartoonist back then had the obvious, unstated life’s goal of being the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post. Their cartoonist, Herblock, had decided to stay in that position until I was 40 years old. I know the feeling. It’s a fun gig.

I didn’t apply for the opening when Herb died. Nor did I apply when Tom Toles retired. I was safely in my Portlandia (and later, Sacramento) cocoon, raising kids, and enjoying my life. Tom Toles, a brilliant cartoonist got the job, and I used to say that Tom was the only person who could get it without even other cartoonist in the United States and Canada saying, “Well, whaddaya gonna do? The guy’s a genius”.

In 2008, the Post brought in Ann Telnaes, who was very much a unique talent and only the second woman to win the Pulitzer in editorial cartooning.

My guess is she might want to enter again this year, even as even the Pulitzers have turned the editorial cartoon category into “Graphic Journalism and Cartooning”.

I think.

I didn’t enter last year. Thank you for your service. I am proud of my Pulitzer, I worked 38 years to get it, but I don’t enter anymore under this diminution of our profession. How can I compete with a team of artists and writers? I was even a Pulitzer juror. Frankly, you could give it to Ann most years, along with 20 other people.

I know Ann very well. She is absolutely a no-bullshit personality in a good way. She says what she thinks to you and in her work. I have been on the sharp, pointy stick business end of a few chats over the years with her, but she is also very thoughtful and kind, with an arid wit. She was a real leader in AAEC, our national editorial cartoonist group, and was president about five years ago. One thing she doesn’t do is fold, take any crap, or otherwise compromise on anything.

Period.

Ann’s work is what I would call “spare”—no extra lines, all business, a trained animator who also brings to the table the ability to distill issues and raise others that hardly anyone else highlights. That’s what makes her great. She sees the relevant issue and goes there. She’s not a humorist, really, and she’d probably admit that. Her work doesn’t look like anyone else’s in a business where it’s not unusual to see 25 cartoons on the same subject approached in a similar manner. Again, a plus. Her style is instantly recognizable.

My usual reaction to her work would usually be, well, lady, you got the shoot to kill order and executed the plan.

When I heard last night that she had resigned in protest from the Post after 17 years of fine work, I was surprised/ not surprised, because I knew she had been having tense exchanges with editors there who do not know shit from shinola about what an editorial cartoon should be. It’s sad, and I don’t wish to name names, but the Post lost its way on editorial cartoons way before the resignation of Ann Telnaes.

Their editors brought in a bunch of New Yorker-type cartoonists—on the editorial page. One did a cartoon about blue jeans.

Blue jeans.

Did their columnists do that? No, they did not. What about the great Herblock cartoon about blue jeans? Remember that one? You don’t?

Oh. That’s because that would have been and is now completely ridiculous. Put it in the Style section, maybe.

But, you know, cartoonists, you know. Heh heh. The little scamps. We don’t want their hard-hitting work, and a lower-level intake editor told a cartoonist friend of mine they were no longer in the market for tough material. Too dangerous. You know. Might offend people.

I even joined the Washington Post Writers Group for six and half years, thinking, well, how cool is that after my late parents would excitedly phone me on Saturday morning?

One day, I got a phone call from my WPWG editor letting me know that they were dumping all editorial cartoons.

Now, I had left Tribune, hurting my friends there, and I only did it, I explained in tears, to the editor, because of those phone calls forty years ago. It was a completely emotional decision, and wow did it cost me a lot of money to make an emotional decision.

Do not make emotional financial decisions. Period.

I loved the Post, and the Post shot me in the kneecaps. Why? They decided that editorial cartoons were no longer part of their “long-term growth strategy”. Here’s a long-term Post growth strategy: grow a pair.

I slunk back to Tribune with my hat in hand, and fortunately the man who was on the end of the receiver when I was blubbering about All the President’s Men took me back.

Ann’s description of her resignation and the reasons behind it showed me Ann’s true self, and Ann’s True Self doesn’t put up with, ahem, cowardice.

David Shipley, who is now the Post’s Opinion editor, is a truly talented guy who drank the goddamn kool-aid, which is a shame. His response to all this?

"Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication. The only bias was against repetition."

Uh huh.

Dave, you’re gonna be repetitively opening thousands of emails kicking you in the shorts for awhile.

No one gives a damn whether the cartoon lines up with the column subjects, at least no editor I have ever worked with over 45 years. It’s our statement, whether there’s a columnist lined up with it or not.

Shipley is a nice Portlandia boy from the Catlin Gabel School, an elite small private academy there, and his folks were major arts community hitters. Shipley called me when I was about 30 or so to get me into The New Republic (don’t get me started on them, honestly). He was then the number two editor. Andrew Sullivan, who I like now, was the executive editor.

He decided I wasn’t the one. But hey.

They gave it to Tom Toles.

As I said, how could I argue with that? I can’t.

Shipley was once married to Naomi Wolf, whose cultural accomplishments include advising Al Gore to wear brown suits and being an anti-vaxxer.

Prior to Shipley, the Opinion editor was Fred Hiatt, a brilliant guy who died far too young at 64. He hired Toles, seemed to understand what a political cartoon was supposed to be, and otherwise conducted himself with decorum. I didn’t agree with everything he and the Post wrote, but no matter. The Post was the Post then.

You know, the crusaders, the leaders, the thought-provoking center located at the fulcrum of American politics.

The Post now?

Hmm.

Well, in reading former WAPO Executive Editor Marty Baron’s memoir, I discovered that he thought Jeff Bezos generally minded his own business, let Baron run the paper the way he saw fit, and wasn’t a meddler.

Until Trump looked like he was ascending again.

I have it on very solid authority that recently, Bezos and Shipley speak most days, and I guess I’d call that meddling.

Suddenly, Bezos lost his courage and folded like a cheap tent, eager to supplicate to the incoming authoritarian regime. He also added a cool million bucks to the Trump inauguration fund.

During Trump I, the slogan of The Washington Post was “Democracy dies in the darkness”.

True dat, my little spacefaring friend. Now that Trump looked like he could assume power, all the democracy stuff went out the window in favor of ending Trump’s war on Bezos and Amazon.

I haven’t canceled my Post subscription yet, but I suppose I will now. Too bad. This is too much. Nor do I even bother to send my work to them. I stopped a few months ago. It makes me sad, but it’s kind of like finding out your mother was turning tricks on the side.

Bezos has hired a bunch of Murdoch Fleet Street clowns to run the smoldering wreckage of what once was a great and even inspirational newspaper. They can’t even find an external candidate to be editor now. Ask Matea Gold, an obvious next Post executive editor, who fled to The New York Times. The Post editor spiked the story, too.

Hi, darkness.

Now? It’s a sinking ship adrift. I assume that Telnaes’s unpleasant exit and how it was handled will result in thousands of fresh cancellations. They lost 250,000 overnight on the non-endorsement alone. See? Editorial cartoonists are popular, dumbasses. So is pointed opinion.

Oh, they’ve got their boy now, Mike Ramirez, who pisses on Herblock’s grave with every brushstroke. And, of course, editorial cartoons about blue jeans.

Ann is my age, 64, and she’ll be fine. This moment will make her Post career seem like a side of fries compared to the exposure and opportunities this courage may lead her to.

Whatever she gets, she deserves.

While I am not able to publicly comment on my career at (XXXXXXXXX), it smells familiar.

It smells familiar to most cartoonists my age, who found themselves lionized one minute and stifled the next. Ask Rob Rogers. Ask any of them who ran into a brick wall on their ability to do what they did before craven cowardice set into the journalism profession now owned by spineless techbro billionaires with no moral or ethical compass—other than dropping their pants for authoritarians.

Mad about Ann? Yeah, I’m mad.

But more importantly, I grieve because it’s not just Ann. It’s everyone in journalism. If you’re in opinion, you should be getting your affairs in order and making other arrangements.

Unless you’re a coward.

Then you’ll be fine.

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Hi, people: This was a hard one to write, because now the direction of American editorial cartooning isn’t determined by staffing levels, money, or the usual reasons. It’s about fear. I can keep doing this column with help, free or paid, from folks like you. I am in your debt, again.

I’ll get to the Week in Cartoons, Annotated, in a bit. —J.