Sketches to illustrate news have been part of U.S. journalism at least since the Civil War, when small armies of artists invaded the battlefields on behalf of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly. The development of the camera did not end the practice, one thing, artists still can go some places that photographers cannotnotably, inside most courtrooms.
A succession of sensational trials lately has made the work of the cortroom artists more evident than ever. For magazines, newspapers and television, they have limned the likenesses of Jack Ruby, Clay Shaw, Sirhan Sirhan...