Billy Penn informs Philadelphians about area news, and the big news in Philadelphia these days is Signe Wilkinson‘s retirement.
Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Signe Wilkinson is retiring from the Philadelphia Inquirer at the end of the year, where she spent three decades chronicling the city’s woes, lambasting its leaders, and celebrating its victories.
The local news site covers Signe’s career with The Daily News and The Inquirer.
Rich Aregood, the former Daily News editor who hired Wilkinson in the 80s, remembered her as an eager kid bicycling around town with a tube of cartoons on her back. He thought her work was brilliant, and her perspective as a woman invaluable for the paper at the time.
To his mind, Wilkinson was never the kind of cartoonist who went looking for a sucker punch.
“Her dagger was subtle,” Aregood said. “She didn’t bludgeon people.”
Read the profile of this amazing cartoonist.
At the end they note:
The Inquirer still employs a cartoonist-reporter, Rob Tornoe, but there are no immediate plans to replace Wilkinson on staff.
“Suffice to say, it would be impossible to try to replace Signe,” said Inquirer Director of Special Projects Evan Benn. “In the short term, our Opinion team will be running cartoons from a number of sources, both local and national. We also see this as an opportunity to develop relationships with emerging artists and other local talent.”
The Inquirer, which merged with the Daily News years ago, noted that Wilkinson’s retirement doesn’t mean she’s gone from the papers forever.
She’ll pen syndicated cartoons every week for the Washington Post Writers Group, which are published by news outlets around the country — including, sometimes, Philadelphia’s.
Elsewhere (YouTube), earlier this month, Signe discussed her career and her cartoons.
And then join Rob Tornoe as Signe reviews 2020 and this past year’s cartoons.
