Bringing Zits to Dallas

If any of you are reading this blog from Dallas, Texas or thereabouts, come out and see Jerry Scott and me Friday night at the Borders bookstore in West Village. We'll be signing books from 7-8PM (and beyond if the throngs are unmanagable and insistent.)

We'll also be doing a morning TV show tomorrow (Friday) and an online chat with Mike Peters (their comics writer, not the cartoonist) at the Dallas Morning News in the early afternoon. The DMN website (www.dallasnews.com) should have the details. You can also check out Mike's interview with Jerry and me from last Sunday's DMN.

Darfur

Thursday Napkin 4.27.06

Gas Notes 4.26.06

Still Later

Later That Same Day...

Monday Notes 4.24.06

It's not a promising sign when my pages of morning notes are all words. When I look up from my empty coffee cup I like to see some doodles and cartoon starters on the napkin in front of me.

Mondays are often like that, though, and always have been for me. The week picks up momentum as it goes along and by Wednesday I typically have a dozen or more cartoon particles floating around in my brain seeking the captions, topics or characters that will complete them. By Friday the elements often fall together voluntarily, without much forcing.

But Mondays are different. The kindest gift I can give myself is to leave some near-cartoon ideas on my drawing board when I leave the studio on Friday so that Monday mornings look less barren.

In my "other job" as a comic strip cartoonist, Sunday night is deadline night, so on Monday morning I'm often coming off of a hard weekend push. Such is the case today, operating on just a couple of hours sleep. The challenge under such circumstances is to muster some ideas early in the day before the energy drop hits (usually as our weekly editorial board meeting begins mid-afternoon.)

EPpy Awards

The Enquirer's Online Guru, James Jackson, informs me that BorgBlog has been named one of three finalists for an EPpy Award (given by Editor & Publisher magazine, the newspaper industry's main professional publication). Here's a bit of the notification we received:

Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek’s
EPpy Award - Finalist

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your entry “BorgBlog” in the Best Media-Affiliated News Blog category has been named as a finalist in the 11th Annual EPpy Awards competition. We had an incredible number of entries this year, and your site has been nominated as one of the leaders in your industry.

The EPpy Awards ceremony will be held at the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas, NV in conjunction with Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek’s Interactive Media Conference and Trade Show, May 18-19, 2006. The EPpy awards luncheon announcing the overall category winners will be held on Friday, May 19th.

The other two finalists in the category are:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s “DayWatch” (Weblog of local news) on JSOnline.com
http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1

Kansas City Star’s “Crime Scene KC” blog on KansasCity.com:
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/



A year ago I barely knew what a blog was, and it gives me particular pleasure to be able to tell my kids, who consider me a technological Homer Simpson, that I am up for Blog of the Year. (They've watched me kick the router box on our home network when my internet connection fails, so I can't exactly blame them.) If I win this thing, you can be sure I will wear it around my neck like Mark Spitz for a good long time until I have regained some of my due respect, or until I have to ask one of them how to load paper into my printer.

I don't kid myself. There is clearly a virginal quality to this blog which, after you've deciphered another several hundred sketchbook scribblings and Starbucks napkins, will undoubtedly begin to look a bit more worn around the edges. But I do think it's a testimony to what blogs can offer in the way of intimacy, candor and direct connection to those interested.

It occurs to me that there might be a larger lesson in all this. Had I been steeped in the culture of the blogosphere when I began doing BorgBlog, I might have tried something much more mainstream and conventional. As a neophyte, I simply went the route that felt most natural, apparently creating something outside the box in the process. I wonder how often childlike curiosity might help in other things we do in the news business?

Or, for that matter, in whatever business you are in?

Friday Notes 4.21.06

Hometown Boys

Pulitzers

Mike Luckovich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning today, his second time around, and well deserved. I figured Mike's "WHY?" cartoon as the one to beat the minute I saw it some months ago. (In case you missed it, Mike lettered the names of all 2000 US servicemen and women who had died in Iraq up to that point inside the word WHY?) It was powerful and had an immediate visceral impact.

Sometimes those of us in the profession cringe when the winners of the big contests are announced, but not this time. Luckovich continually draws lively wacked out cartoons full of energy and cool caricatures. There's a wonderful childlike scribbling quality to his drawings which a lot of us have learned from. And he's always right on top of the news with a fresh perspective.

The great thing about the timing of Mike's win this year is that he is such a great ambassador for editorial cartooning at a time when the profession is suffering from plummeting newspaper budgets and staffing cuts. Mike has a fun, telegenic personality, which may help editors and publishers look again at the value of this artform and its unique contribution to editorial pages in search of vitality and relevance.

Monday Notes 4.17.06

Friday Notes 4.14.06

Colossus Caption Contest

Colossus, the Cincinnati Zoo's beloved 40-year old gorilla, the largest gorilla in captivity, died yesterday of heart failure while undergoing a root canal. The story brought up a lot of images for me, a lifelong gorillaphile (not the least of which was a gorilla in a dentist's chair undergoing a root canal.)

Today's mission is an odd one, then -- an obit cartoon for a gorilla who fascinated millions and whose story touched a lot of hearts. I've ruled out the crying banana, but thought you might like to try supplying a caption for St. Peter as Colossus approaches the Pearly Gates.

Wednesday Notes 4.12.06

Perky Strike

Monday's Effort

Back from Vacation

Wait...the Leak was Bush? The Stones played China? The Immigration Bill fell apart? Tom DeLay resigned his seat? Katie Couric is the CBS anchor?

How long have I been gone?