Mike Keefe wins 2011 John Fischetti Award

The Denver Post Editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe has been named the winner of the 2011 John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition.

Keefe’s winning entry for the most recent competition pokes fun at legislation enacted by Arizona last year, the “broadest and strictest in the nation” to curb illegal immigration, according to The New York Times. The cartoon depicts two public safety officers stopping a motorist and comparing his skin tone to a paint swatch before asking him to step out of the car.

“This cartoon embodies the form’s best elements, a fresh visual take on a timely, provocative subject,” said Nancy Day, chair of the Journalism Department at Columbia College Chicago, which coordinates the competition and the event.

Fischetti, whose work appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News, died in 1980. His friends, family and colleagues established the political cartooning award and a scholarship fund in his memory in the Journalism Department of Columbia College Chicago.

The annual Fischetti competition is judged by a panel of professional editorial cartoonists who are past winners not competing this year, joined by a rotating group of faculty members. Unlike other competitions, which evaluate a portfolio of work, the Fischetti honors a single image. Each professional may submit up to three cartoons a year.

Keefe will receive his award at a celebration of editorial cartoonists and Fischetti Scholars on April 14 from 6-8 p.m. in the college library. They will be joined by Steve Breen, a double Pulitzer Prize winner from the San Diego Union-Tribune, who won the 2010 award.
The 2011 cartoon runners-up were by Breen, who drew a dog tag chain outlining Afghanistan, and by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on a theme similar to Keefe’s, with a Native American asking white legislators for their papers.

Keefe previously won the Fischetti Competition in 1991, 2001 and 2007. He has been the editorial cartoonist for The Denver Post since 1975. He has also been honored with other top awards from the National Headliners club in1986 and the Society of Professional Journalists in 1986. His work has appeared in over 200 newspapers across the country including Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post.