Every evening, just as many people are shutting down their computers for the day and starting to think about supper, Dan Martin is gearing up to complete his daily drawing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: a fresh depiction of the newspaper’s Weatherbird.
The artistic process gets going once the news editor sends him a budget around 6 p.m., summarizing plans for the next-morning edition of the newspaper’s front page.
“And I’ll choose one of those stories to draw about,” Martin, a longtime cartoonist and designer for the Post-Dispatch, explained to St. Louis on the Air.
Left unsaid is that the chosen story will be an uplifting one.
First hired by the paper in 1980, Martin has been drawing the beloved Weatherbird character for 35 years now, taking up the task when his predecessor Al Schweitzer retired in 1986. He’s the sixth artist to carry on the legacy since the cartoon first appeared in the February 11, 1901, edition of the Post-Dispatch.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch has a short item about Dan Martin
prior to his St. Louis on the Air radio appearance Tuesday, April 13.
This story will be updated after the show.
You can listen live.
On January 7, 2021 there was no “light” front page story:
