With the swirl of a pen and a carefully linked line, Jeff Koterba can conjure up a politician or cut through difficult campaign rhetoric.

As the political cartoonist for The Omaha World-Herald, Koterba uses a 13-by-9 inch canvas to make people laugh and think about the world around them. The black-and-white and sometimes color cartoons enable even the least politically informed person to grasp an issue.

But even though he draws cartoons for a living, it’s hard work.

Koterba starts his day watching the morning news and reading several newspapers. Then he listens to the radio, but mostly for the headlines. Koterba takes in as many news programs as he can but tries to get a healthy dose of cable programming to stay well-rounded. Koterba uses the media as background information. The stories, headlines and images inspire his ideas. Those ideas are further developed by talking to people around him.

“I rarely get a solid idea from radio or TV,” Koterba said.

Koterba thinks about relevant topics for the day and waits for an idea.

“It’s an internal mechanism, about what feels right.” He sets a goal to have an idea by “lunchtime-ish” and takes the afternoon to do the drawing.

Political cartoons distill down the news into a clear and easy image for people to understand, he said. “My job forces me learn about issues and there is a danger in the art of that. Cartoons over-simplify politics and I tend to see that both sides have a point. It sounds wishy-washy, but that doesn’t mean that I am.”

Koterba usually draws from photographs, although watching political figures talk on TV helps him form their facial structures. Koterba pencils his cartoons, and then inks them with a brush pen. Three out of the six cartoons published a week are printed in color. Koterba watercolors them himself, preferring to be more hands-on than clicking buttons on a computer.

Koterba usually works in the office every day but Saturday, although he’s not required to work in the white noise-filled environment. When first starting out, Koterba would be up almost all night functioning on copious amounts of coffee. The former caffeine addict drinks only decaf now, and empty Starbucks coffee cups litter his small space.

Koterba isn’t required to attend editorial meetings but does so when invited. He doesn’t attend meetings where political candidates are interviewed.

Koterba never turns his cartooning brain off, but he’s not always working on cartoons. He writes, plays in a local band, Prairie Cats, and says that other creative outlets help with the cartooning process.

Today, there are fewer than 90 political cartoonists who work on a newspaper’s editorial staff, down from a peak of 200 in the early 1980s. Often editors will purchase the rights to several different cartoons and then publish the least offensive one. Some editors will even go so far as to fire their editorial cartoonist, but still publish his or her cartoons through the syndicate, eliminating the cartoonist’s benefits, pension and full-time salary.

Koterba is syndicated with King Features and runs in about 400 papers throughout the country. This past summer, Koterba had two cartoons printed in the New York Times.

Koterba is 47 years old but looks about a decade younger.

“Most cartoonists I know look young. I think there’s something in the water, or the ink that keeps us youthful. Maybe it’s the fact that we draw cartoons for a living that keeps us that way,” Koterba said.

The Omaha South High School and University of Nebraska at Omaha graduate was hired on at the Omaha World-Herald on a trial basis, and he is now in his 20th year as political cartoonist.

Koterba definitely thinks that cartooning about some elections is easier than others, like the 2008 presidential election, for example. With a woman running for vice president and a black man running for president, among a plethora of colorful local and national characters, “There’s a lot of meat to sink my teeth into,” he said.

Koterba handles issues with race and gender with respect. “If you’re set out to hurt feelings, the whole original point gets lost.”

Koterba recently received some flack about a cartoon depicting two Caucasian men at the Gene Leahy Mall. A reader wrote in wondering why the cartoon featured two white men and not a black or Hispanic man. Sometimes it’s a lose-lose situation.

“My guiding principle is that if I have a good point I will make it,” Koterba said. He’s offended by cartoonists who deliberately go out of their way to be offensive, and didn’t particularly like the July 21 New Yorker cover depicting Barack Obama as a Muslim, fist-bumping his gun-toting wife.

Koterba receives some angry e-mails, but will dialogue with the reader if the person is respectful of Koterba’s views.

As Koterba inks a caricature of presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, he reflects on his profession: “I get to draw cartoons — I just enjoy that, that’s a pretty cool thing.”