Click here to see video interview with Mike Lester.
Rome News-Tribune editorial cartoonist Mike Lester has won a major national award. The Society of Professional Journalists named Lester winner in Editorial Cartooning in announcing its Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism on Thursday. The awards recognize the best in professional journalism in print, radio, television and online each year.
The judges said of Lester’s winning entry: “We felt Mike Lester’s editorial cartoons for the Rome News-Tribune showed a unique, breezy and consistent style. Each panel was strong and wry while commenting on important social issues. There is humor but it is not disrespectful. The cartoons have broad appeal. We applaud Rome News-Tribune, a small newspaper, for having a fulltime editorial cartoonist on staff.”
Lester’s editorial cartoons appear on the Opinion page of the Rome News-Tribune and on www.romenews-tribune.com, and he is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons.
He was also recently named a finalist in two divisions of the National Cartoonists Society Awards. He is a finalist in the editorial cartoonist and book illustrations categories. The winners will be announced in May.
In the past three years, Lester has won two first-place and a second-place award for best original editorial cartoon from the National Newspaper Association. He has also won several Georgia Press Association awards.
Lester says this particular award is special. “While I am very honored to get NNA, NCS and GPA awards, this is — outside of most improved conduct in the sixth grade — my greatest achievement,” Lester said this morning.
He has been the editorial cartoonist for the Rome News-Tribune since 2002. His prior newspaper credentials include five years with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
For more than 20 years, Lester has created images and illustrations for advertising campaigns of major corporations as well as illustrating for national maga-zines, writing and illustrating children’s books, and games, gifts and licensed products.
His animated cartoons for Celebrex garnered best advertising award in 2004 from the National Cartoonists Society.
He culls his editorial cartoon ideas from whatever is happening in the local community or the world.
“I get them from the daily news cycle. There’s so much information being thrown at the public every day.”
Click here to see Mike Lester cartoons.
Click here hear an audio interview with Lester on Cagle.com
For more on Mike Lester, read Friday’s Rome News-Tribune.
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