Business News

Chicago Tribune Hires Political Cartoonist

Wednesday 19. August 2009 - The Chicago Tribune announced today that political cartoonist Scott Stantis will join the editorial board on September 1.

“We are delighted that Scott will be joining our team at the Chicago Tribune. For the first time in nearly a decade, local political cartooning will be a mainstay on our opinion pages, both in print and online,” said Gerould Kern, Senior Vice President and Editor.

“Scott Stantis’ cartoons will focus primarily on news and issues of special relevance to Chicago and Illinois and give a new dimension to our role as watchdog over the community’s interests. Scott will bring a sharp wit and penetrating commentary to the Illinois political landscape,” said Kern.

“The Tribune has an extraordinarily rich history of political cartooning, from John T. McCutcheon to Carey Orr to Dick Locher to Jeff MacNelly,” said Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor. “Scott has tremendous respect for that history and plenty of ideas about the future of the political cartoon.”

Stantis has been the cartoonist for The Birmingham News since 1996. His work is syndicated to more than 400 newspapers and has been featured by the Tribune, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the New York Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, CNN, “CBS This Morning” and “Nightline.” He has worked for the Orange County Register, the Memphis Commercial Appeal and The Arizona Republic.

Stantis began the cartoon strip “Prickly City” in 2004. It appears in nearly 100 newspapers. He sits on the board of the Editorial Cartooning Initiative and is a former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

He is a member of the board of the Epilepsy Foundation of Central and Northern Alabama and the board of Workshops, Inc., which provides jobs and services for people with disabilities. He is a 2004 graduate of Leadership Birmingham.

A California native, he spent part of his childhood in Madison, Wisconsin before returning to California. His father was raised in Chicago. Stantis has been married for more than two decades to his college sweetheart, Janien Fadich-Stantis. They have two sons.