Los Angeles Times hires David Horsey

Long­time Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer car­toon­ist David Horsey, who also served as an edi­to­r­i­al board mem­ber back when the P‑I had a print edi­tion, is leav­ing the P‑I and Hearst News­pa­pers to take a job with the Los Ange­les Times begin­ning in Jan­u­ary, Times edi­tor Russ Stan­ton announced today.

“He will work with 2012 cam­paign edi­tor Cathy Deck­er and Asst. Nation­al Edi­tor Steve Padil­la as we re-launch ‘Top of the Tick­et’ for the pri­ma­ry sea­son. David will jump into the fray with an ear­ly vis­it to South Car­oli­na, a piv­otal state that holds its pri­ma­ry on Jan­u­ary 21st,” Stan­ton said in a memo to LA Times staff.

Horsey is per­haps the Pacif­ic North­west­’s most tal­ent­ed polit­i­cal car­toon­ist. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ing, and he has also released two books in the past decade (From Hang­ing Chad to Bagh­dad in 2003; Draw Quick, Shoot Straight in 2007). His nation­al­ly renowned car­toons have also appeared in many oth­er works of non­fic­tion, includ­ing our good friend John de Graaf’s Affluen­za, pub­lished around the turn of the century.

Horsey has yet to acknowl­edge the move on his P‑I blog, but hope­ful­ly he’ll post a prop­er good­bye before he joins the LA Times.

His depar­ture like­ly means that there will be one less per­son cov­er­ing pol­i­tics for the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer (at least on a full time basis). And it comes only a few weeks after Chris Gry­giel’s exit. Gry­giel had also been cov­er­ing pol­i­tics on an almost full-time basis for the P‑I since its tran­si­tion to an online-only pub­li­ca­tion; he left Hearst in Octo­ber to take a posi­tion with the Asso­ci­at­ed Press.