Ben Sargent (born November 26, 1948) is a retired American
editorial cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. Their cartoons are used to convey and question an aspect of daily news or curren ...
. He began drawing
editorial cartoons
A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine ...
cartoons
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...
are also distributed nationally by
Universal Press Syndicate
Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, was an independent press syndicate. It distributed lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebe ...
.
Biography
Sargent was born in
Amarillo, Texas
Amarillo ( ; Spanish for "yellow") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Potter County. It is the 14th-most populous city in Texas and the largest city in the Texas Panhandle. A portion of the city extends into Randall County ...
, into a
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
family. He learned the printing trade from age twelve and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at fourteen. He attended
Amarillo College
Amarillo College (AC) is a public community college in Amarillo, Texas. It enrolls over 10,000 students and was established in 1929 as Amarillo Junior College. Amarillo College has a total of six campuses as of October 2005.
As defined by the ...
and received a
Bachelor of Journalism
The Bachelor of Journalism (B.J.) degree is a degree awarded at some universities to students who have studied journalism in a three or four year undergraduate program. In the United States, some schools that do not award the B.J. degree instead c ...
degree from the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
in 1970.
Sargent won the
Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
The Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary is one of the fourteen Pulitzer Prizes that is annually awarded for journalism in the United States. It is the successor to the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning awarded from 1922 t ...
in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers.
He is the author of '' Texas Statehouse Blues'' (1980) and '' Big Brother Blues'' (1984).
Sargent is married to Diane Holloway, former television critic for the '' Austin American-Statesman;'' Sargent and Holloway both retired from the paper in March 2009. They have two children, Sam and Elizabeth.
In a profile published in the January 2005 issue of ''The Good Life'' magazine, Sargent stated, "As a newspaper journalist, you're professionally obligated to be fair, accurate, complete and balanced. But there are two pages in the back of the paper where we're obligated to be fair, accurate and complete—but we don't have to be 'balanced.' I'm not a pollster. To me, you're obligated as an opinion journalist to express your views no matter what the politics of the day. If you don't, then people will say, 'Why should I read what this guy's saying? He doesn't even know where he stands?' That makes your position as an opinion journalist kind of useless."