Don Asmussen
With bad reporters like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Don Asmussen realized it was about time a cartoonist blurred the lines between fiction and fact. Hence, "Bad Reporter."
The heroic cartoonist promises to expose "the lies behind the truth, and the truth behind those lies that are behind that truth." Even if he does only half that, or maybe even a quarter, it will still be a better world.
"Bad Reporter" started in late 2003 in the San Francisco Chronicle as a reaction to Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for California governor. Soon it evolved into a weekly cartoon diary of the 2004 presidential election, culminating in August and September with the cartoonist covering the political conventions daily, in color, from New York and Boston.
Asmussen was born in 1967 in Rhode Island, a state so small someone had to leave so that Don could fit. But he still didn't fit (metaphorically), and started a long journey through newspapers that included the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, The Detroit News, and The San Diego Union-Tribune. By 1997, he ended up at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he created a weekly strip called "The San Francisco Comic Strip," which trashed everyone in the city but Don himself (he's sensitive to self-criticism).
In 1998, he was approached by Time magazine, for which he created a regular comic strip which ran until late 2001.
In 2003, with action heroes running for office, Don realized politics had finally caught up with his cartooning, and he launched "Bad Reporter." The line between fact and fiction would be forever blurred — but not the punchline.
