pulitzer

Git Yer Speaking On

It all started with an email soon after the Pulitzer announcement. I began receiving loads of very kind emails with the subject line "Congratulations!" or "CONGRATULATIONS!!!" Those emails were very nice, but they made me a complete sucker for spam emails that also tend say "Congratulations" or "You Won An Award!" After uncharacteristically falling for a few spam emails, I ignored emails that kept arriving in my inbox with congratulatory subject lines and Chinese characters.

Until the Chinese spammers started calling me on the phone.

But wait, they weren't spammers, they were journalism professors from a well-known university in Hong Kong organizing the fourth annual "Pulitzer Prize Winners Workshop." I was a little leery at first, thinking I might be expected to tout the wonders of the glorious People's Liberation Army or advocate for Harmonious Society through Locking Up Dissidents.

So I asked around.

Wonderful cartoonist and friend Signe Wilkinson, it turns out, had a coworker who attended the workshop a previous year. The report was glowing. "They'll treat you like royalty," and "you would be an idiot not to go," or something to that effect. So I went . . . and was treated more like a rockstar than royalty (which is much more fun anyway).

Hong Kong Baptist University is a very well known, progressive school with a strong journalism department. (No full-immersion baptisms to be found, by all appearances a regular secular school.) Hong Kong itself is a not-so-little bastion of free speech that is kinda sorta part of China. ("One country, two systems," as they like to say.) Everyone I talked with was so hungry to talk about politics, free speech and when change would come to mainland China.

I spoke to packed lecture halls, was photographed a million times, had to be whisked away from an excited throng that reminded me of "Hard Days Night," had cocktails with the US Consul General and ate a fish that made my mouth feel like I had just consumed a kilo of cocaine (which was fortunate, because I had just eaten cow bowel before that).

Amid all the doom and gloom in journalism, this was an amazing eye-opening experience. Most of the students at HKBU were from mainland China and are facing something a tad more dire than buyouts and layoffs. I got choked up explaining the First Amendment to journalists who asked me, how can it be that I get to make fun of politicians?

While there were other Pulitzer Prize-winners there from previous years-- like the Copley's Jerry Kammer, who helped send former Rep. Duke Cunningham to jail-- I spent most of my time with the students and tried to get to know Hong Kong and Kowloon as much as possible.

My Hong Kong hosts were the best, particularly because they live in a place where cartoonists are treated like rockstars.

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Update: Also had a great time speaking at Georgetown and Stanford, but since there was no cocaine-fish, writing about it is probably not advised.

Update #2: Clearly Hong Kong is made for cartoonists:

Pulitzer Entry Cartoons

I meant to do this sooner, but here are the 15 cartoons that I submitted for my Pulitzer Prize entry. These were all done in 2009 and are now all embeddable youtube videos.

Like my other animation, these are all drawn with a brush dipped in ink, on paper first, then scanned into the computer and animated in Flash.

Think Different. But Not Too Different.

I know I promised to go into more detail about my recent Pulitzer win (still amazed and floating on air), but it seems that story has been eclipsed by interest in the fact that Steve Jobs and Apple reject apps that “ridicule public figures.” For more back-story, you can look here, here and here.

While I’ve been a fan of Apple and use their gadgets and gizmos to help create my cartoons, it’s good to see Apple’s anti-satire bent is getting some attention. I’m still amazed a company that created this ad is now so hostile to political content:

Satire and “ridiculing public figures” are not only good for our Democracy, they can be good for business—for Apple and for independent creators. (Once Apple accepted my previously-rejected app, NewsToons, it shot to the top spot for paid news apps, beating out CNN and the Drudge Report.) While the iPhone and iPad won’t solve all of the problems facing cartoon journalism today, they do represent a life preserver in a sea of closing newspapers and hugely profitable websites that refuse to pay creators.

In short, satire and ridicule good, Apple policy of rejecting political content, bad.

While mine is not the first political satire app to be rejected by Apple, it seems to have received the most attention thanks to the recent Pulitzer win. (And thanks to Laura McGann’s Columbo-like questioning that broke the story. “Just one last question . . .”)

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (where I am a board member) has called on Steve Jobs to see the light and do what’s right for journalism and free speech in the good ol’ US of A.

“While the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists realizes that Apple is a private sector company, Apple is also becoming one of the primary ways people publish news and information. With that innovation comes new responsibility.
A vigorous public discourse, opinion, satire and, yes, ridiculing public figures, are essential to journalism and our Democracy. Our nation would be a very different place if early technological innovators like Benjamin Franklin and those who followed him, forbade their presses from being used to ridicule public figures.”

Now, to answer a couple of questions people have been asking.

1.) Did you change the app’s content in any way before resubmitting it to Apple, in order to get approved?

No, I definitely did not. When you ask a political cartoonist to change something about the political content of their work, their usual impulse is to do the exact opposite. For example, back when I worked for a newspaper I was told by the new publisher to go easier on George W. Bush, which promptly caused me to go harder on Bush.

Which, um, led me out the door where I happily returned to working for myself.

2.) Why didn’t you tell Apple to go to hell and instead create an app with one of their competitors?

The reason I decided to continue working with Apple is that I want to see them put satire and independent political voices into their mix of apps. My NewsToons app is now one of those voices, and by the way, is still in violation of their Ye Shall Have No Ridicule policy.

Had I walked away in protest, there would still be no political animation in Apple’s app store. My goal is to show the inconsistency and subjectivity of their approval process. You shouldn’t have to win a Pulitzer or get on teevee just to get your political app approved. With the help of others, I’ll continue to push for Apple to open their doors to a wide range of satire, news and politics. If you have had an app rejected because it ridicules public figures, email me. (And, yes, I may create an app with one of their competitors.)

3.) Will you continue to update your app and add improvements? (Also sometimes phrased as, “Why does your sucky app take so long to load?”)

Yes, I will continue to add improvements to the app and it’s functionality. The first version is very simple and had a tiny development budget. (Unfortunately, I’m too dumb when it comes to programming to do these things myself.) The massive response to this app has made loading take longer than it should, but we’ll change that soon. I’m also really looking forward to making new apps that are more game-like.

Long story short, I’m really hoping this is just temporary confusion at Apple HQ as they change from a fortress-like computer company to more of a media company.

The Fourth Estate is becoming Estate 4.0.

Whoa! What a Monday!

Holy-moley, what a 24 hours! I've been meaning to do a quick blog post about receiving the Pulitzer but have been way too swamped with the whole whirlwind. Stay tuned for a full update and some inside tidbits that aren't reported. (Or at least things you wouldn't think of, like how I am now a complete sucker for those spam emails with the subject line "congratulations!".)

Thanks to all of you who have written or called, and to everyone who has supported me over the years.

More soon!

-Mark