Foundation News

Politically independent and a champion of the little guy, Herbert L. Block (1909–2001)—better known as “Herblock”—spared no one from the wrath of his art. His pointed commentaries offer an opportunity to reflect on history and culture. How much has changed and what remains the same?

While the physical Herblock Gallery is closed, we’re offering ten new cartoons online every six months to highlight topics that filled the news 50 years ago.  We also have display cases with original drawings by Herblock to visit in person on the Jefferson Building mezzanine.

Political cartoonists discussed the 2024 election and global affairs at an event hosted by the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship (IDJC) in Washington, D.C. Topics included surprises in the 2024 election, how satire is perceived as news, and cartooning during times of war. 

Editorial Cartoonists: Matt Wuerker, Ann Telnaes, Michael Ramirez, Pedro Molina, Vladimir Kazanevsky, and Rachita Taneja. 

Brodner, a frequent contributor to The Nation, is both a great caricaturist and a great portraitist.

Matt Bors was a creatively hungry 29-year-old cartoonist with energy to burn and a vision to fill a journalistic void. The popularity of nonfiction comics and graphic novels was soaring in 2013, yet many news outlets were cutting back on their topical cartoons.

Now that Steven Breen is out at the Union-Tribune as its long-time editorial cartoonist, the local daily — recently purchased by a hedge fund — is in dire need of a local artist with the gravitas of taking on issues in a comic way.

So, stand aside!

The OB Rag hereby recommends local boy, Lalo Alvaraz — artist of the award-winning “La Cucaracha” daily cartoon series — for the U-T’s new editorial cartoonist!

Even in a year when media layoffs seem a daily part of the news, the firing of three Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists in a single day was a gut punch

NEW YORK (AP) — Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch.

McClatchy, citing ‘continuing evolution’ for the cuts, says its newspapers will no longer publish daily opinion cartoons

Jack Ohman cannot recall another day like it, even amid decades of brutal cuts in the field of newspaper political cartooning.

This is, alas, a Juxtaposition of the Fired.

The Washington Post’s opinion pages were never particularly good, so the fact that they have devolved into a sad, toxic wasteland mostly inhabited by lazy neocons and right-wing reprobates is a shame,  but not tragic.

What the Post opinion pages always excelled at, however, was political cartooning.

Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist at The Washington Post, is the 2023 recipient of the Herblock Prize, the Herb Block Foundation announced.

As Kevin Necessary peacefully transfers the power of the presidency of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists on to 

A decade after the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist departed The Inquirer, a colleague reflects on his memorable career — and mourns the decimated state of their still-vital profession.

When the 29-year-old Tony Auth arrived at The Inquirer from Los Angeles in 1971, readers didn’t know what was about to hit them.

Herblock, Garry Trudeau, Patrick Oliphant, Paul Conrad and other artists who skewered Nixon and his inner circle made the era a boom time for political satire

(First published May 25, 2015, republished for Watergate 50th Anniversary)

Herblock was the pen name of Herbert Block, the Washington Post’s political cartoonist who graphically captured the Watergate story in more than 100 often memorable drawings done between June 1972 and August 1974. Twenty of them are presented in this feature in chronological order.

In May, Insider won a Pulitzer Prize, joining a small group of digital-only news organizations awarded journalism’s top prize. But like Politico back in 2012, the recognition came in an unlikely category for an online news organization — cartooning.