I never really intended to be a newspaper graphics and design guy. I wanted to be a sportswriter. Or someone who covered space missions at Cape Canaveral.
I was glued to my TV set in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the Apollo moon missions. That’s also when I discovered the power of newspapers in covering events like that. I started writing sports stories for the local weekly in my tiny South Carolina hometown when I was in the eighth grade and I continued through my high school years.
Here's a clipping from my second year of sportswriting. For five and a half years, I covered football, basketball and girls' softball for the McCormick Messenger.
But I was also interested in design — specifically, the design of rock and roll album covers. Some had photos! Some used illustrations! Some included booklets and posters! Some included lyrics!
I've managed to keep just a bit of my old vinyl collection. These were some of my favorite album covers
When I went off to Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1980, I went with the intention of studying both journalism and design. I worked for the school’s sports information department and covered high school sports for the Charlotte Observer. I also took art classes and concentrated on graphic design, typography and so forth. I ended up porting some of this visual energy back into newspapers by developing an interest in editorial cartooning.
Editorial cartooning requires a juicy target. My favorite one was our new college president, who had political aspirations and repeatedly took steps that seemed awfully tone deaf to we in the tuition-paying student body.
My cartoon work in college even won me a state award. During my Senior year, I also began contributing two cartoons a week to the local daily newspaper. I'd later return to that newspaper in 1988 and would spend five years there as their news artist.
Imagine my surprise when my two favorite fields suddenly merged when USA Today was born in 1982. Suddenly, every newspaper in the world wanted infographics artists! And there I sat, with training in journalism, a background in research and interests in science, history and political science, and the ability to draw and design!
I even learned how to use a Macintosh computer in my spare time, shortly after they hit the market in 1984. Simply because I thought they’d be fun to play with!
In early 1987, I went to work as cartoonist and advertising designer for the Banner-Herald and Daily News in Athens, Georgia.
This is me, in 1986, working on a cartoon for two daily newspapers in Athens, Georgia. The morning paper and the afternoon paper had the same staff and worked out of the same newsroom, but had different editorial pages. This gave me twice the opportunities to get a cartoon into print.
For what it's worth, they finally DID build that four-lane highway all the way to Atlanta. We still don't have the flying cars, however.
Every year, African-American members of the state legislature would introduce a bill to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from the state flag. Thirty-seven years later, I feel like this was the very best cartoon I ever came up with. For what it's worth, they finally DID remove the old Battle Flag in 2001.
I also used my cartooning skills in the rest of the paper as well. These are two of my attempts to break out of the standard news design mode to create different-looking -- and, hopefully, interesting -- features section fronts. Both are from the summer of 1986.
One day, were were all caught off-guard when our corporate computer guys installed a new Mac SE with 2 mb of RAM and a 20 mb hard drive and departed with instructions to us to “figure out how to use it.”
My colleagues were baffled. No one had ever SEEN a Macintosh before — or a computer mouse, for that matter. I offered to demonstrate. Within a couple of hours, I was informed I was the paper’s new newsroom artist. When I asked what were the duties of a newsroom artist, our editor told me: “YOU figure it out.”
Our photographer asked me to act like I was juggling apples for this photo.
So I did. I made up my own rules and my own procedures for dealing with reporters and editors. As I gained experience — and as I moved to larger papers as the years went on — I found I had developed a proactive way of brainstorming and creating newspaper visuals.
In late 1988, I had returned to Rock Hill as news artist for the Herald. When Hurricane Hugo smacked us hard the next fall, it gave me plenty of opportunities to pull together my own information and create my own infographics.
I taught my first overseas workshop in October 1989, instructing designers at the Echo of Sunderland, England, on how to better utilize their new color Macintosh computers.
As my proficiency and my reputation grew, editors would sometimes simply give me a full page in which to display the material I had researched, written and designed myself.
In 1993, I was hired away by the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1994, I worked with two of our reporters to compile the data for this full-page graphic on our failing infrastructure. This page won me my first national graphics award.
No matter where I moved, I just couldn't get away from hurricanes! This one swerved to the right and tore right through the Raleigh/Durham area. The Apple household was without power for nine days.
As awards began to roll in, I found myself pursued by some of the largest papers in the nation. I spent three years at the Chicago Tribune ...
We had full-time graphics researchers at the Tribune, but I was equally skilled in research as well as in drawing. This diagram of NASA's first Mars rover was one of the first large pieces I did for the Tribune in late 1996. A news story was dropped into that large empty spot.
Sometimes when things would happen in the evenings or on weekends, I'd attend news meetings and pitch suggestions for graphics that I could pull together myself. I found the guys in sports to be especially receptive to my ideas. I watched a video of this play, over and over, to built this one.
... before sliding into management in Des Moines, Iowa. For the first time, I was responsible for guiding a graphics staff of my own! I preached proactivity, I encouraged artists to do their own research and I pushed our department to do more section front work, transforming it into a "centerpiece factory."
I hired Katie Van Dalsem Kunert, here, after she graduated from a local college. She proved to be one of our more prolific artists and a fabulous researcher. She ended up working for that paper for 21 years.
When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry -- with an Iowa native aboard -- one Saturday morning in February 2003, three of my staffers rushed to join me in the office. I researched and wrote and they drew. Together, we created the five graphics that were displayed on these two facing pages.
Thinking the 2000 election might turn into a bit of a photo-finish, I pitched the idea of a full-page diagram that would explain how the Electoral College works, who each state was expected to vote for and which "swing states" readers should keep an eye on. This was the year vote counting in Florida dragged on for weeks, keeping Bush and Gore supporters in suspense. We looked awfully smart for having run this page on Election Day. And I've built a similar one for every election since.
In 2003, I moved again to Virginia to become graphics director of the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. I became a regular instructor at the American Press Institute in Washington, D.C., and I began blogging about news design and infographics.
I posted thousands of blog items about the state of newspapers, tips on how to present news more effectively and heaping praise on good work. I had quite a following for a while -- I even found my blog posts quoted a time or two by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
When the newspaper business began to disintegrate in the late 2000s, I found I was still in demand, teaching overseas. I traveled to Nigeria, Kenya and the Philippines. If you combine my five teaching and consulting trips to South Africa, they would add up to nearly eight months of work.
My first South Africa assignment was instructing graphic artists for the Media24 newspapers at the company's corporate headquarters in Cape Town in August 2009. I'm still in touch with most of these folks.
![Occasionally, I was asked to create a full-page graphic for the Media24 newspapers. For this one, I was asked to explain to readers how the exchange rate worked between U.S. dollars and the South African rand and what typical Americans might spend their money on while in South Africa. I built this page in English and editors translated it into Afrikaans.]](https://media.spokesman.com/photos/2024/09/11/24_AFRICAGRAPHIC.jpg)
Occasionally, I was asked to create a full-page graphic for the Media24 newspapers. For this one, I was asked to explain to readers how the exchange rate worked between U.S. dollars and the South African rand and what typical Americans might spend their money on while in South Africa. I built this page in English and editors translated it into Afrikaans.]
In 2010, this East Coast boy moved to Santa Ana, California, where I took over the Orange County Register’s Focus page, which the paper had used to display stories from their various wire services. These wire stories had become scarce, and the Register was seeking a solution.
I suggested we turn the page into a daily graphics-heavy experience. The editor’s one direction to me was: “Indulge yourself.” And I did, researching topics that I found interesting and finding (hopefully) clever ways to present them.
A few examples of my Focus pages for the Orange County Register. The "Powerball" page on the left was my very first Focus page. The one on the right -- "Written Word" -- features photos I took myself after interviewing the Rabbi who was examining the scrolls.
I later became managing editor for visuals for the Victoria (Texas) Advocate and then deputy design director of the Houston Chronicle. I was there for Hurricane Harvey — at 51 inches, the biggest rainfall event in U.S. history.
One night while cruising Twitter, found preliminary rainfall data posted by a University of Wisconsin professor. He sent me the raw data, which allowed me to create this map showing where the 34 trillion gallons of rain fell on the Houston region.
I kept looking for ways to tell this story in an interesting way. I finally came up with this yardstick: Cut the four pieces out of the paper and tape the ends together. The result showed rain gauge data from various Houston area communities, as well as previous rainfall records.
While I was working in California and Texas, my wife had moved back to her former home in Lilburn, Georgia, to take care of her elderly parents. I joined her there in October 2019 and expected to retire from newspapers forever.
Not so fast, said my former Orange County Register colleague Rob Curley. He had been named editor of The Spokesman-Review in 2016. He insisted on hiring me to create some of the same full-page, visually-driven story magic for his paper that I had dreamed up in California. Even if I had to work long-distance to do it.
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Rob had another brainstorm: Newspapers around the country were desperately seeking good content to fill their pages at a time when they were short-staffed and not much news was happening. His idea: Let's distribute my pages to those papers.
And so we did. At first, to editors I had met over the years as a blogger, consultant and instructor. And then, as word of our little effort spread, to more papers. Today, our Further Review pages are distributed to 251 newspapers -- including 98 dailies -- in 30 states around the country. It's not uncommon for me to hear from readers in cities I've never even HEARD of!
Here, I hold up three pages that printed in a paper near me. For what it's worth, the two pages on the right will appear in the upcoming Further Review book.
In early 2024, I passed the five-year mark at The Spokesman-Review, meaning I’ve now worked for Rob’s paper longer than any other job I ever had. My 1,000th Further Review page will publish in early October.
And in November, a hardcover collection of 97 of my history-themed pages will be published!
The 208-page book will ship from the publisher, Pediment, on November 15. You can order one here: www.Apple.PictorialBook.com
While newspapers are falling apart across the country, shedding journalists and closing their doors for good, I’m lucky enough to work for a robust organization located in a city full of eager readers, doing the kind of work I love and still picking and choosing my own topics.
The Spokesman-Review flew me back to Spokane in August 2023 for an appearance at Spokane's Rockwood community. Photo: Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review.
I’m still indulging myself and loving it. I’m the luckiest guy working in newspapers today.