© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The Miami Herald and WLRN have a groundbreaking news partnership.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Jim Morin Reflects On His Second Win

Our news partners at the Miami Herald are celebrating a huge win. The news outlet won two Pulitzer Prizes this week.

One was for Explanatory Reporting for its coverage of the Panama Papers. The other winner was Jim Morin, who won for Editorial Cartooning. This is Jim's second Pulitzer Prize. His first was in 1996. 

I sat down with Jim soon after the Miami Herald newsroom gathered to hear the announcement and toast to their wins. 

How do you feel?

Fantastic! This one was really unexpected because it's later on in my career. And usually they they tend to go to people who are starting out or in their mid careers or something like that. So I didn't expect this at all. When someone said it was a possibility, I couldn't believe it. And I'm thrilled and proud to have won it. 

Having done the work for so long, I'm sure there's so many times — especially working on the editorial side of things — where you want to throw in the towel.

The Miami Herald is a big part of it as well. I have been through so many editors at this paper, seven of them. These are just fantastic people and they've never gotten in my way, which some editors do. When you get that kind of freedom, it allows you to do your best work. There's no block to take a chance. And when you take a chance, that gives you your best work. 

Forgive me for not knowing this, but how does [the Pulitzer Prize] work with editorial cartoons?

It's actually changed. Back when I started I think it was 10 [cartoons] and then it might have gone up to be 12. And then, you know, we draw 250 cartoons a year and it doesn't take that long to read a cartoon. So we sort of asked them if it's possible to see a little bit more of our work. Just about everybody in the profession has 10 good cartoons. But 20 cartoons, that's a challenge. So it's 20 cartoons and you choose them and submit them. And they read them and it goes to a jury. The jury chooses three people and then the three people are sent to the Pulitzer Prize board and they choose the winner.

Credit the Miami Herald
Jim Morin in the Miami Herald newsroom just after his name was announced as a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.

Tell me about your history. Have you always wanted to do this?  

I grew up with a kind of a political family. Interestingly enough, Republicans in Massachusetts. That's really unusual circumstances. We used to have a lot of discussion at the dinner table and about politics and at the same time I love to draw cartoons since I was a very young kid. But it didn't all connect until I got to college and the Watergate scandals happened. When I was a student overseas in London, people were asking me left and right how it felt to be an American. "How do you feel about Watergate? What do you think about Nixon and what's going on?" And I  had to answer those questions.

When I got back I was about to go into my senior year in college. Being in art school my mother was petrified that I wasn't going to have a way to make a living. She suggested I do what Herblock, the great editorial cartoonist, does. I went to my senior year and before I could propose drawing for the Daily Orange at Syracuse University, a friend of mine who worked in the paper approached me. I thought that was a good sign. I didn't even have to ask. They asked me and I drew one cartoon. And that went into two cartoons, then three, four, and then five.

I was doing five cartoons a week and I just junked all my studies and would submit the cartoons for independent study. One guy gave me a B, one gave me a C and one gave me an A. I didn't care, I was just looking for a portfolio to take and send to newspapers. I sent them to newspapers all over the country. And a year later I got my first job in Beaumont, Texas, with the Beaumont Enterprise and that was it. I was probably more thrilled then than at any other time because once you work for a newspaper, you're in the business. I'll never forget that moment. And here I am still doing it. 

And I'm sure you won't forget this one either. 

No no, not at all. 

More On This Topic