Conrad Obit: Not the Whole Story

In Conrad Obit: Not the Whole Story, LA Times columnist Bill Boyarsky writes about " the unforgivable way he [Paul Conrad] had been treated" toward the end of his tenure as editorial cartoonist.

"The editorial page became bland and more conservative. Conrad, the opposite of bland and conservative, was out of place and out of highly placed friends and supporters.

"In 1993, Conrad accepted a buyout and was replaced by a conservative cartoonist, Michael Martinez.

"Conrad and readers were told that he would continue to appear in the Times. But as it turned out, he ran only sporadically. The impact of his daily cartoons was gone. He was just another of the syndicated cartoonists the paper occasionally used. Readers didn’t know when he would appear, or where on the pages his cartoons would run. Angry, he often called the editors, demanding to know why his cartoons weren’t being run. He couldn’t get straight answers. America’s greatest political cartoonist was being treated as if he were a rookie freelancer."