As a little kid, I couldn’t wait to open up the Courier-Journal and draw Hugh Haynie’s political cartoon. I dreamed of growing up and making a living doing social commentary just like the late Hugh Haynie did.
On September 30, 2013, I finally got a chance to peek into the long-vacated political cartoonist office on the Courier-Journal’s 3rd floor. Mr. Haynie was succeeded by Nick Anderson, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his cartooning. Anderson now works for the Houston Chronicle.
Standing in this little office today, I imagined the swirling creative pressure that bore down on both Haynie and Anderson as deadlines approached.
The 3rd floor former office of Courier-Journal staff artists Hugh Haynie and Nick Anderson remains unused. September 30, 2013This Dell computer may have been a part of Nick Anderson’s Pulitzer Prize winning career but it was not in existence when Hugh Haynie penned his daily cartoons for the Courier-Journal.A Hugh Haynie original from 1988 that I bought at a charity auction. Notice the glued paper scraps adding the dialogue portion to the pen and ink drawing.
The Frazier History Museum is featuring a Hugh Haynie cartoon exhibit through January 2014. The collection consists of 100 of Mr. Haynie’s best works as selected by his son, Jefferson County Family Court Judge Smith Haynie.
The Courier-Journal invited my TV co-host Rachel Platt and me to record a video piece about books that changed our lives, part of a CJ campaign to encourage school kids to read more books. We recorded our video in a room I’d visited 28 years earlier.
Here is one of the photography studios on the 6th floor of the Courier-Journal building. Photographer Mary Ann Gerth was shooting a video of Rachel Platt and me on the subject of the importance of reading books. (September 30, 2013)This 1985 photo of Ron Clay & me was shot in that same 6th floor studio. Prior to photoshop, tricky pictures involved real tricks. Courier-Journal photographer Gary S. Chapman had a refrigerator on the floor with the table and wall mounts all bolted to sell the feature article’s theme of “Off The Wall.” The dish towel had to be coated in some varnish to harden it and make it appear that it was hanging “down” toward the perceived floor. In the magazine, the photo was turned 90 degrees to the left to make it appear that Ron and I were literally “off the wall.” Pretty awesome.This photo, also shot in that 6th floor studio, was used as the cover on the May 26, 1985 Courier-Journal Magazine. The cover script said: “Terry Meiners and Ron Clay will say almost anything so long as it’s tasteless, tactless and offends almost everyone. No wonder so many listeners love them.”
