Clay Bennett Wins 2005 Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition
All three top cartoons address Iraq War—Awards Ceremony, Party & Auction Set for April 7
CHICAGO, IL (PRWEB) March 27, 2005 -- Editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett of
The Christian Science Monitor is the winner of the 2005 John Fischetti Award.
This is the second Fischetti Award for Bennett, who also won in 2001. Honorable
mentions went to Steve Breen of The San Diego Union-Tribune and Nick Anderson of
The Louisville Courier-Journal. Bennett and Breen are both past recipients of
the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning; Anderson won the Fischetti Award in
1999. The 23-year-old competition is sponsored by Columbia College
Chicago.
The winning cartoons, along with two dozen original cartoons
submitted by past Fischetti winners and others culled from the Fischetti
archives, will be exhibited and auctioned on April 7. Student winners of the
college’s Paula Pfeffer and Cheryl Johnson-Odim Political Cartoon Competition
will also be honored that evening. Their work, which is also for sale, will be
shown alongside that of the professionals.
The Fischetti/Pfeffer ‘05
celebration of editorial cartooning will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on
Thursday, April 7, at the HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Avenue, Chicago. Individual
tickets are $35. For reservations call 312-344-7936. Proceeds from the event
will benefit the Fischetti Endowment, which provides scholarships to Columbia
College Chicago journalism students and student cartoonists.
All three Fischetti-winning cartoons reflect turmoil over the war in Iraq.
Bennett’s First Place cartoon shows servicemen, in a posture reminiscent of the
famous photograph of World War II soldiers planting the American Flag on Iwo
Jima, propping up a house of cards, with the word “IRAQ” on the back of each
card. Anderson’s cartoon depicts a grinning President George W. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney driving a steam roller over crushed debris, labeled
“Environment,” “Fiscal Responsibility,” “Civility,” “Geneva Conventions” and “We
the People.” Breen’s cartoon shows Osama Bin Laden standing amidst a huge crowd
of Muslim men, hoisting the now-familiar image of an Abu Ghraib torture victim
high overhead. The caption reads, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand New Al-Quaeda
Recruits…”
More than 200 cartoons by 72 cartoonists, all published in
2004, were submitted and given careful scrutiny by the panel of judges, which
included three prominent cartoonists. The 2005 award carries a $5,000 cash prize
for the winner. All three finalists are flown to Chicago for the Annual
Fischetti Awards ceremony and reception. Bennett, Breen and Anderson will be
also be honored on April 6 at the annual Studs Terkel Awards Benefit, sponsored
by the Community Media Workshop.
John Fischetti was a Pulitzer Prize-winning
editorial cartoonist whose work was published in the New York Herald-Tribune,
the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. Shortly after his death in
1980, friends created the endowment in his honor, which has helped educate more
than 400 students, many of them now award-winning journalists. More information
is available at www.johnfischetti.org.
The Paula Pfeffer and
Cheryl Johnson-Odim Political Cartoon Contest for Columbia students was
established three years ago to engage students in current political discourse
and provide them an opportunity to express their artistic and analytical skills.
Endowed by Columbia lifetime trustee Samuel Pfeffer, the contest is co-sponsored
by the Columbia Chronicle student newspaper and the departments of Liberal
Education, Art and Design, Journalism and the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Also new this year is
a public discussion on the future of editorial cartooning, Lampooning for a
Living. The event takes place from noon to 2 p.m., at the HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo.
The 2005 Fischetti Cartoon Competition Award winners will be joined by
cartoonists Chris Britt of The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois,
Steve Kelley of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and Ann Telnaes of Washington,
D.C., who is nationally syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The symposium is
co-sponsored by The State Journal-Register and the Journalism Department of
Columbia College Chicago. (For more detailed information on this event, please
see the separate news release.)
Columbia College Chicago, an urban
institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher
education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media
and communication arts to more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
Founded in 1890 as a communications school for women, Columbia College Chicago
was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a “hands-on minds-on”
approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the
current leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D. Columbia is
aggressively pursuing this mission. Through the diversity of its students and
graduates, the school brings a rich vision and multiplicity of voices to
American culture. For further information visit www.colum.edu.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb222200.htm