Herblock Prize Is Announced

By: E&P Staff The Herb Block Foundation announced the creation of a $10,000 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning.

Eligible for the annual competition will be editorial cartoonists published in U.S. newspapers and magazines and the U.S. editions of foreign magazines. The initial prize will be awarded for cartoons published in 2003, with the ceremony taking place next March at the Library of Congress -- repository of more than 14,000 Herblock cartoons.

The foundation (Syndicate World, March 13) also announced the creation of a lecture series. In addition, it has begun soliciting grant proposals from groups "involved in defending basic freedoms" and has approved the establishment of a community-college-scholarship program for needy students in the Washington, D.C., area.

Herblock created the foundation in his will and endowed it with $50 million. The cartoonist died in 2001 at age 91 after a multi-Pulitzer-Prize-winning career that began in 1929 with the Chicago Daily News. He joined The Washington Post in 1946, and his last national distributor was Creators Syndicate.

The foundation recently created a Web site.