Awards, Awards and more Awards

It's been a good year for me on the award front. I just found out that I was the SPJ Mark of Excellence national winner for best college editorial cartoonist. Frankly, I didn't even know I had entered the competition.

I graduated from grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison last spring, and the student newspaper I used to draw cartoons for, the Daily Cardinal, must have entered some of the work from my last semester there.

I'm glad that I won, but I also feel sort of like ringer. I regularly draw cartoons professionally for both the Wisconsin State Journal and The Tampa Tribune, and most of the competition is talented undergrads, and I was a graduate student at the time. But nonetheless, it always feels good to be a winner.

The SPJ award caps off a good award season for me. In March, I won the Milwaukee Press Club award for best editorial cartoon in Wisconsin (for the third year in a row) and in April I found out that a project that I worked on for the Wisconsin State Journal was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (alas there was no winner in our category).

But my lips are sore from tooting my own horn, and all the awards aside, I'm still waiting for someone to "show me the money."



Here is today's editorial cartoon commemorating the career of "good ol"' Uncle Rodney at the railroad. Rodney Kreunen was a great public servant, who brought passion to the position of railroad commission. He is being forced out to make way for a political appointment. He will be missed.