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No Oregon newspapers won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday. But one former Oregonian did.
On Tuesday, Jack Ohman was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer for editorial cartooning, for his portfolio of drawings at The Sacramento Bee. The Pulitzer committee celebrated his work as "cartoons that convey wry, rueful perspectives through sophisticated style that combines bold line work with subtle colors and textures."
Portland readers will recognize that perspective and style.
Ohman went to work for the Bee in 2012 after 29 years as a cartoonist for The Oregonian. He took a buyout from The O one year after he was named a Pulitzer finalist.
Oddly, The Oregonian has yet to acknowledge Ohman's Pulitzer win with a post.
His move to California came as The Oregonian entered a period of layoffs and an aggressive move to the web. Ohman has declined to discuss his departure under the terms of his buyout.
"It's hard to start over again when you're 53 years old," he told WW in 2014.
He succeeded. In Sacramento, Ohman drew sardonic and impassioned cartoons that skewered Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz and California Gov. Jerry Brown, and portrayed a nation numbed by police brutality and gun violence.
Perhaps the most striking entry in his Pulitzer-winning portfolio contains no caricatures at all—just a "U.S. Citizen Mass Shooting Report Form" that asks survivors to add details of a massacre in Mad Libs form.
On Tuesday, Ohman expressed gratitude for the wave of congratulations pouring in.
"I feel like Jimmy Stewart at the ending of It's a Wonderful Life, where he realizes that he's the richest man on earth because he has friends," he wrote on Facebook. "I'm going to try to thank you individually but for now, this is all I can do after more champagne than I should drink in a workday."
Willamette Week