Six weeks ago the Honolulu Civil Beat announced a contest for a political cartoonist (second item on page) to bolster the presence of editorial cartoons on their pages. And possibly earn a regular spot at the news organization. (Honolulu Civil Beat is a local digital platform that transitioned in 2016 to a 501(c)3 tax-exempt news organization.)
Today Civil Beat announced the results:
The entries in our 2024 political cartoonist contest are in and the winner is Will Caron, a Hawaii journalist and communications professional who has been drawing for more than a decade.
Civil Beat profiled Will Caron:
Like many good news professionals, Will’s first attempt to break into the business was rejected. This by the comics page editor at Ka Leo, the University of Hawaii’s student-run newspaper where Will applied to be a cartoonist when he began attending the college. That was back in 2007 and by the time Will graduated in 2012 he’d taken over the comics page as editor and, in fact, had taken over the whole paper as editor in chief.
Will tells the Sunshine Blog he’s not had his work published in recent years, mainly because he’s been working as the communications director for the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.
Civil Beat continues:
We’ll be sending Will a check for $500 and The Blog hopes to buy him a cup of coffee and discuss future contributions to our “Let The Sunshine In” project.
Second place — and a check for $300 — goes to Sterling Sasaki, a retired graphic artist and high school coach. Born and raised on Kauai, Sterling was a nationally ranked table tennis player when he arrived at UH long ago and where he got a degree in art and teaching. He tells The Blog he had a lot of fun drawing these two entries.
And third place, along with a check for $100, goes to Gabriel Irons for his depictions of Hawaii political figures as characters from the cartoon show “The Simpsons.”
Congratulations to all three.
Hey mahalo for covering this.
De nada.