Jack Ohman was the youngest cartoonist ever to be nationally syndicated at 19 years old.
His career started in politics in the late 1970s, when he worked as a political aide for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
His inner artist won over his inner politician when he began drawing editorial cartoons for the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper for the University of Minnesota.
He then realized he could make a living out of cartooning and was syndicated a few years later, at 19.
“Imagine you are suddenly shoved out in the news media as the youngest cartoonist in the United States,” Ohman said.
Now in his 45th year of the career, Ohman creates five cartoons a week and they appear in over 200 newspapers across the country, including The Coronado News.
In total, he said he has made roughly 11,000 political cartoons, most of which he still keeps in his garage.
Ohman won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2016 and was a finalist in 2012.
He has worked for The Sacramento Bee since 2013, and previously worked at The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.
Weekly feature in The Coronado News
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Ohman is based out of Sacramento, where he lives with his wife.
They have six children between them, ranging from the ages of 28 to 34.
He said he comes to his opinions for the commentary of his cartoons, nationally and in California, from a sensible point of view.
“I am not a sniper,” Ohman said. “I try not to dismiss people because I don’t agree with them; that’s not how I operate.”
He does operate from the standpoint of a writer.
“Really, fundamentally I’m a writer; the art is secondary,” Ohman said.
He said he has a quick style, which allows him to start and finish a cartoon before noon, five days a week.
After conceiving and writing the idea, he puts pen to paper, or rather paint brush to paper, never planning out his drawings with pencil roughs.
According to Ohman, once he gets to the stage of creating the cartoon, his mind enters a meditative state as the work becomes second nature.
His method of drawing has not changed with shifting modern technologies.
He still operates with paintbrush and ink to paper. After which, he runs through Photoshop.
“I have a 13th-century delivery mode and a 21st-century filter that I’ve got to run it through,” Ohman said.
In a way, Ohman feels like he has hit the peak moment of his career, and plans to continue creating cartoons for five to 10 more years.
He said that while the role of a political cartoonist may be changing, it is important to include cartoons on editorial pages of newspapers.
“On a daily newspaper, if you have a good editorial cartoonist, people will pay attention,” Ohman said. “Nobody else can do it; it’s a very specialized skill set.”
Along with winning the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s top achievement, Ohman has won the 2011 Scripps Howard Foundation Journalism Award, the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the 2009 Society of Professional Journalists Award, among others. To see more of his work visit https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jack-ohman
