Conrad lightly sketched

As an editorial cartoonist, Paul Conrad’s political commentary landed him on President Nixon’s enemies list, won him three Pulitzer Prizes and fueled the 1960s renaissance that transformed the Los Angeles Times into a newspaper of national distinction.

The documentary on Conrad airing tonight, “Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire,” part of PBS’ “Independent Lens” series, is an entertaining look back that could have risen to something more had it framed Conrad’s journalism against the crisis facing the industry today.

Conrad, in his 80s, still works -- four cartoons a week, distributed by Tribune Media Services -- but for a business that has changed, as corporate decision-making (including at Tribune Co., owner of The Times) is wagged by Wall Street while staffs on the ground stare wistfully at evaporating readership.

In his 30 years as a fixture at The Times, Conrad didn’t have to entertain questions about circulation numbers or what kind of paper The Times should be or the more general ambiguity about the role newspapers play in readers’ lives (nor would he have, it seems safe to say). His relationship with the audience was simpler -- a purist’s anger exposed daily to the masses, whatever the outcome (irate readers on the one hand, fans who exhibited his work on their refrigerator doors on the other).

Only at the end of the hour do filmmakers Barbara Multer-Wellin and Jeffrey Abelson broach the more current subject: Are the dwindling ranks of political cartoonists simply the byproduct of bottom-line decision-making or rather a matter of newspapers adapting to a wider swath of political humor, just as they are adapting to the Internet on other fronts?

The outrage among Muslims last year spurred by editorial cartoons in a Danish newspaper was perhaps a reminder that the medium could still draw attention to itself. But as an artist’s medium as well as a journalist’s, the genre is, in a sense, doubly vulnerable to the Web, with its fluid, scattershot quality of citizen satire (the YouTube mash-up sitting in the inbox) and professional spoofing (the clip from last night’s “Daily Show” available for next-day viewing on the Comedy Central website).

The issue kind of hangs over the hour, over the man himself, though it’s clear that Conrad will just bite down on his pipe and keep drawing. “Drawing Fire,” narrated by Tom Brokaw, is a tour of the 11 presidents Conrad has skewered -- from Truman to George W. Bush -- his liberalism and antiwar satire hard-won, influenced by service in World War II and a Catholic upbringing.

A precursor to the easier, nightly doses of Jon Stewart, Conrad made himself a threat to Nixon (with his Shakespearean hubris) and a flea in the ear of less paranoid presidents. “Thank you for not smoking” was the caption underneath the image of President Reagan holding a gun during the Iran-Contra affair. The Statue of Liberty holding a microphone and peering through binoculars was his retort to the Bush administration’s wiretapping controversy.

“You gotta know your subject,” he says. “That requires reading, not listening to the radio or watching television.”

“Drawing Fire,” in this way, has the tone of an elegy to an icon and a lecture from an elder, though Conrad consistently undercuts any sentimentality by letting his personality -- and his work -- shine through.

The Times pushed him into retirement in 1993, losing part of its brand in the process (a subject that the documentary touches on but doesn’t explore, beyond the suggestion that Conrad was bitter about being put out to pasture).

Only about 3% of newspapers now have a staff cartoonist, says Chris Lamb of the College of Charleston. Conrad isn’t one of them, though he does have a website (www.conradprojects.com), and there are those midterm elections today. So he’s probably drawing about now, with or without some cable news channel on in the background or the future of newspapers and democracy in the balance.

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paul.brownfield@latimes.com

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‘Independent Lens -- Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire’

Where: KCET

When: 10:30 tonight

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)