The Washington Post’s editorial cartoonist has quit.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Ann Telnaes made the announcement in an online post on Friday.
Telnaes said she made the decision after the newspaper killed a cartoon poking fun at Post owner Jeff Bezos and other media and tech figures kneeling before President-elect Trump, some with bags of money.
“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication,” Telnaes wrote, “but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
The Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley, said he disagrees with Telnaes’ interpretation of events.
In a statement emailed to WTOP on Saturday, Shipley said that his decision not to run the cartoon was based on having already run opinion columns on the same topic.
“My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication,” Shipley wrote. “The only bias was against repetition.”
Telnaes joined the Post in 2008.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001 while with Tribune Media Service, and she was nominated twice more for her work with the Post.
Telnaes posted her announcement, which includes a draft of the disputed cartoon, on her Substack page.
WTOP’s Ana Golden contributed to this report.
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