Cartoonist’s second Pulitzer sweeter

Richard Pretorius, Correspondent

• Last Updated: April 30. 2009 11:47PM UAE / April 30. 2009 7:47PM GMT

An example of Steve Breen's work. AP Photo / Pulitzer Board

Steve Breen never envisioned winning US journalism’s highest honour when he was drawing cartoons in junior high school, inspired by his love for Mad magazine, a satirical publication aimed at adolescents.

A few years later, after he became the cartoonist for his university newspaper, he simply hoped he could get a job doing what he had come to truly love. He had his doubts and had a backup plan to be a high school history teacher.

Flash forward 17 years and an “embarrassment of riches” is how Breen describes winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for the second time before the age of 40.

Less than two weeks ago, Breen, who works for the San Diego Union-Tribune, won for what the Pulitzer board described as “his agile use of a classic style to produce wide ranging cartoons that engage readers with power, clarity and humour”.

The 20-cartoon portfolio Breen submitted took on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball, censorship at the Beijing Olympics, the economic meltdown, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s high-priced wardrobe and the blunders during the presidential campaign.

Breen had previously won a Pulitzer in 1998 when he was the editorial cartoonist for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. That year, the Pulitzer Board declined to pick a winner among the three nominated finalists, two of whom had won the prize before, and chose Breen from the other entries.

That is part of the reason Breen says winning the “second time is better … The way I was selected the first time left room for some critics to disparage my selection.

“I do feel my portfolio was better this time. I am not saying I am a wise old man … but I am 39 and feel like I have a healthier perspective on things than I did in my twenties,” he said.

That perspective helps him better judge his own and others’ work.

“Different things factor in to a good editorial cartoon,” he said. “When I read the work of others, my favourite elements are originality, clarity, power and humour. Of course, there are other ingredients in a good cartoon, but these tend to be what makes me remember the piece.”

Ideas are the soul of an editorial cartoon and coming up with good ones a cartoonist’s never-ending challenge.

“I get my ideas from reading. The more reading the better,” Breen said. “I love it when I am inspired by a topic, when I have lots of time to come up with ideas and when I have time to put into the artwork.

“My favourite day is when I come up with an idea I really like and have three hours to draw and colour it: a luxury. Usually I don’t settle on an idea until late in the day and I only have 70 minutes to go to finish it.”

Besides daily deadlines, the only other negative to a job Breen says he is privileged to have comes when he feels he is forced “to do a cartoon on a day when I am not inspired by anything in the news”.

“That’s tough,” he said, adding that the best reward is when “someone tells me my cartoon made them think, or even better, got them to change their mind on a topic”.

His boss at the Union-Tribune, Robert A Kittle, the paper’s editorial page editor, said on the day this year’s Pulitzers were announced that Breen’s “great gift” is his ability “to target someone but not be mean spirited about it. This happens to Steve a lot: the people whom he targets in a cartoon, whom he criticises, they call asking for the original.”

A Union-Tribune reporter asked one of the people Breen frequently skewered, the city’s former attorney, Michael Aguirre, for his perspective on that theory.

Breen “truly has a brilliance for capturing the essence of situations … What offended me the most was when he depicted me as an [overweight] Batman. I was going to sue for invasion of privacy because my physique was so close to correct,” Mr Aguirre told the newspaper.

Despite the daily deadlines, Breen still finds time also to partner with another editorial cartoonist in drawing the comic strip Grand Avenue, which appears in more than 150 newspapers.

When asked what is next, he responds as someone for whom the recognition and prizes are nice, but pale in importance to what his craft is all about.

“I still have millions of minds to change on dozens of topics. The work is never done,” he said.

As for another Pulitzer, five newspaper cartoonists have won three. No cartoonist has won four.

Though the future of the newspaper industry is in doubt – leading Breen to dedicate his prize “to the guys who have lost their jobs” recently – he most likely has plenty of years left to try to be the first.




rpretorius@thenational.ae