Former editorial cartoonist Steven Lait got a couple paragraphs in a recent New York Times article about The Costco Connection, a monthly magazine for the membership-only retail warehouse store.
Each month, 15.4 million copies of Costco Connection are mailed out to members. Another 300,000 are distributed via Costco warehouses. It is now the nation’s third largest magazine.
Steven’s journey from newspapers to retail began in 1991 when he was hired by The Oakland Tribune as a staff graphic artist, doing the usual graphics that newspapers need to break up the monotonous black print.
Which is not to say they didn’t let him exercise his artistic chops on occasion. Below: from December 1992.
By 1995 The Oakland Tribune had granted Steven a semi-regular spot as a sports cartoonist with a panel variously titled Laitscores, Lait Scores, or LaitScores. It would run in the paper until 2008.
During the 1990s Steven also contributed editorial cartoons to The Oakland Tribune and the associated Bay Area News Group papers. In the year 2000 he seems to have become the newspapers’ regular editorial cartoonist commenting on local, state, and national topics.
Above are samples from 2010 and that is Steven’s last year with the newspaper.
From there Lait went freelance for a while until taking up with Costco in 2011.
From that New York Times article:
That spirit of enthusiasm and optimism is something Steven Lait is still getting used to. A refugee from the newspaper trenches, Mr. Lait was a cartoonist at The Oakland Tribune, in California,for almost two decades before he relocated to Washington and was stunned to discover the existence of “an actual publishing department that’s got funding,” he said. He was hired as a graphic designer for The Connectionin 2011, which means he is “just getting over being the new person,” he said.
He means this. There is now one newer hire — a single staff member who joined the team since Mr. Lait did. When people leave, it’s usually to retire.
Mr. Lait is an exception for his experience outside of Costco. Several of his co-workers started where Mr. Vachris did, on the warehouse floor, as forklift operators and baggers. “There was so much tumultuousness about jobs in newspapers,” Mr. Lait said. “Being here at a place like this — it’s stable. It’s just so nice.”
Steven doesn’t quite work in anonymity at the magazine, he gets his name on the masthead credits.
And while his illustrations don’t get individual credit online, he does in the actual magazine.
So yes, Virginia, there is life after editorial cartoons.
to Mike Rhode for the NY Times/Steve Lait excerpt