My buddy Scott Stantis, one of the few conservative cartoonists whose work I genuinely admire– for its originality and intelligence and for Scott’s refusal to blindly follow the Republican talking points–has been hired by the Chicago Tribune. He follows a long line of brilliant editorial cartoonists who have penned for the Trib. It’s taken the newspaper more than nine years to fill the vacancy left by the death of the great Jeff MacNelly, an inexplicable lapse for a newspaper famed for its great cartooning. At least they finally hired the right guy.

This is wonderful news for my profession, the ranks of which have been steadily shrinking as the newspaper industry implodes. The Birmingham News, the paper Scott worked at for the last 13 years, says it will hire a cartoonist, which means that, at least for a little while, the bleeding has stopped. Hooray!

A link to Scott’s work can be found on the lower right side of this page.