Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau will be the first cartoonist to receive the George Polk Career Award. The George Polk Award is given to honor special achievement in journalism.
Garry Trudeau will be the 33rd recipient of the George Polk Career Award and is the first cartoonist in the program’s history to be so honored. He has cut political pretension down to the size of his Doonesbury comic strip for 45 years..
The award will be given on Friday, April 10 in New York. The night before, Garry will speak along with Jules Feiffer and Django Gold, senior writer for The Onion, on the topic of comics and satire in journalism.
Photo by David Shankbone
The Polk announcement forgot to mention Trudeau may have originated “product placement” with early strips featuring Coors beer.
It was effective in giving me a thirst for Coors. The problem was it wasn’t available then in the Cleveland area and I was still underage.
In this challenging economic landscape for cartoonists, Trudeau could further monetize Doonesbury by sending Miller/Coors brewing an invoice for all the advertising he provided, backdated to the early seventies.