Freelance cartoonist Jen Sorensen accepted the 2023 Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons from the National Press Foundation at its annual awards dinner, February 15, 2024.
Sorensen’s weekly cartoon appears in alternative newspapers across the country, including Seven Days (Vermont), The Austin Chronicle, C-VILLE Weekly (Virginia), Boulder Weekly, Illinois Times and Tucson Weekly. Over the past year, her work was published in The Nation, Politico, In These Times, and a variety of digital media outlets including Daily Kos and The Nib.
Her four-panel approach has criticized how society worships wealthy people with “big” ideas, satirized the doubling of “frontover” deaths as vehicle height increases, and explored the evolution of Twitter, from the early years of random thoughts to a take on what “X” has become.
“Who can take on the entire tech industry in four panels? And yet it echoes all the way through,” National Press Foundation judges said.
The judging panel noted the high quality of candidates from across the country. They were impressed with Sorensen’s “unique” skill in taking on a “galaxy of issues.”
“[Her] cartoons aren’t just reacting to one thing that happened in the news, she looks at bigger trends.”
The Berryman Award, established in 1989, is given annually in memory of a father and son who were both Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists and represent the highest standards of illustration and journalism.
Last year’s winner was Boston Globe cartoonist Ward Sutton. Previous winners include Ruben Bolling, author of the Tom the Dancing Bug weekly cartoon strip, Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Robert “RJ” Matson of CQ Roll Call and syndicated cartoonist Nancy Ohanian.
Sorensen, who started her weekly strip in 1998, was a 2017 Pulitzer finalist and winner of the 2014 Herblock Prize, a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a 2013 National Cartoonists Society Award for Editorial Cartooning. She served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in 2021.
