PULITZER GOES TO FIORE FOR ANIMATION

For the first time, the Pulitzer committee on editorial cartooning, not usually the most forward-looking deliberative body on the planet (because there’s usually only one cartooner on the committee), awarded the prize to a cartoonist whose work is all animated, not a traditionally static image in sight. Numerous cartooning kibitzers believed this day was looming, but few thought it would arrive so soon. Mark Fiore self-syndicates his animations to the websites of NPR, Mother Jones, Slate and others as well as SFGate.com, where, saith the Pulitzers, “his wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary.”

It was a most appropriate accolade: Fiore is not only the first animating editoonist to win, he was among the first — if not, in fact, The First — editoonist to go into animating his cartoons as a full-time enterprise, making the cartoons and marketing them, too, via the Web. His cartoons are not just moving pictures: they are full-bore productions with music as well as dialogue and, sometimes, songs. And he manages to preserve from his static cartoons a limber line that waxes and wanes and even bunches up at corners occasionally, creating a nifty visual hook. He is a genuine pioneer, whose example has inspired an entire profession.

In 2007,  the Pulitzer went to Newsdays’s Walt Handelsman who was the first winner whose submission enclosed animations as well as motionless editoons, and the Pulitzers revised their criteria to embrace the new medium, but, until this year, an editorial cartoonist’s portfolio had to include traditional, static cartoons even if it also contained animated cartoons. Fiore is the first to win for cartoons that are solely animations; and his portfolio comprised no immobile cartoons.

But Fiore doesn’t see animation as the only future for political cartooning.

"I think it's A future," Fiore says. "I hope it's not THE future. I hope there are still traditionally drawn print cartoons by staff cartoonists. ... Judging by what's happened, though, that won't be necessarily the only way."

Finalists in the competition this year were: Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer for “his simplicity in expressing consistently fearless positions on national and local issues,” and Matt Wuerker of Politico for “his broad portfolio that encompasses the nation's historic political year, using rich artistry, wry humor and sometimes animation to drive home his deft satire.” Wuerker won the coveted Herblock Award just a few weeks ago.

In one of those delicious strokes of irony, in the wake of Pulitzer’s announcement about Fiore’s win, it emerged shortly, thanks to a Nieman Journalism Lab blog, that last December Apple wouldn’t let the cartoonist’s iPhone app into the App Store because it “contains content that ridicules public figures.” As soon as that story surfaced, Steve Jobs said: “This was a mistake that’s being fixed.” And, sure enough, Apple asked Fiore to resubmit his app, and it was accepted this time.

Said Fiore:“I think the key passage in the Apple developer agreement that made things impossible was something like ‘ridicules public figures,’ which is, um, like, kinda what we all make our living doing. Methinks that may change thanks to the confluence of media over this crazy week.”

In a sort of backhanded testimony to the potent status of editorial cartoons, the Denver Post, my local paper, has logged only six Pulitzers in its career (the sixth, this year), and two of the six were won by editorial cartoonists: Paul Conrad in 1964 (just as he was leaving for the Los Angeles Times) and Pat Oliphant in 1967 for work in 1966, the year after he arrived at the Post from his native Australia.