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.
Congrats to Dave, it’s our loss.