By: Dave Astor The Herb Block Foundation (HBF) is waiving the usual $50 entry fee for its annual $10,000 Herblock Prize because of the difficulties the editorial cartoon profession is facing these days.
"It's a small gesture, but it's something we thought we ought to do," HBF President Frank Swoboda told E&P Monday. "It's a time of siege for editorial cartoonists."
Today is "Black Ink Monday," which the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists is holding to protest job cuts. Part of the protest involves doing cartoons about the state of the industry.
Swoboda said cartoonists can obviously use the waived $50 for anything they want, but the HBF (
www.herbblockfoundation.org) hopes they will consider donating it for a use that might help the profession. One use, he said, might be to fund a poll which would probably show how well-read editorial cartoons are.
Newspapers have been shedding many editorial cartoon jobs. The most recent casualties include Michael Ramirez of the Los Angeles Times and Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher of The Sun of Baltimore.
The deadline for entering this year's Herblock Prize competition is Feb. 1, 2006. Previous winners were Tony Auth of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Universal Press Syndicate (for his 2004 work) and Matt Davies of The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., and Tribune Media Services (for his 2003 work).
Herblock was the legendary Washington Post cartoonist who died in 2001 at the age of 91 after a 72-year career. His work was distributed by Creators Syndicate during the latter part of his career.
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