The winners of the 90th National Headliner Awards have been announced. The annual contest honors the best print, radio, television and online journalism in the United States published during 2023.
The Press Club of Atlantic City has announced the winners of their 2024 National Headliner Awards.
Clay Bennett of The Chattanooga Times Free Press won the Editorial Cartooning category.
Said the judges:
You know a Clay Bennett cartoon as soon as you see it. His clean, uncomplicated style is both soft and cutting. And his message is always a mix of a 2×4 over your head, a smile, and a sigh. The man picking up his newspaper (another shooting on the front page) while waving a white flag speaks for all of us. The “woke” woman in bed between two newspapers does, too. And the prescription pad telling Kate Cox to “Leave Texas” was a true gut punch. Clay is an artist who helps us see how the news of the world impacts our lives in a simple, sadly reassuring way.
The organization has made the Clay Bennett winning portfolio available in a pdf.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press noted their cartoonist’s win:
Chattanooga Times Free Press cartoonist Clay Bennett has received the 2024 National Headliner Award for Editorial Cartoons, it was announced Monday.
The Press Club of Atlantic City presents the Headliner Award, which is one of the oldest annual contests in the nation recognizing journalistic merit.
Mike Thompson and Robert Ariail were finalists (with links to pdfs of their submitted portfolios).
Second Place
Mike Thompson
Star Tribune
Third Place
Robert Ariail
Andrews McMeel Universal Syndication
I looked through all 21 cartoons submitted by the three winners and discovered that none of them included a single cartoon about President Biden. Is Biden totally off limits if you want to win in this category?
Maybe if you don’t declare war on women, aid and abet ruthless dictators, steal government documents, spread countless QAnon conspiracies, break dozens of laws, believe you have absolute immunity, brazenly attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and brag about grabbing women’s private parts, you don’t merit lampooning, unless, of course, you simply want to rag about Biden being an old man and having a stutter.
If I remember correctly, Joe Biden, not Trump, held the presidency in 2023. The Headliner contest’s finalists comprise talented cartoonists, yet none of the 21 entries features a caricature of Biden. It appears that the cartoonists are playing to the perceived biases of the judges.
In 1967, editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant aimed to highlight the Pulitzer Board’s preferences for their own political agenda by submitting a cartoon (at the time only one cartoon was entered instead of a body of work) that depicted Ho Chi Minh holding a dead Vietnamese with the caption “They won’t get us to the conference table…will they?” Oliphant consider this cartoon as “one of the worst cartoons I’ve ever drawn.” And yet, he won. This led Oliphant to abstain from future submissions and to openly criticize the Pulitzer selection process.