The offensive image above “Gate Crashers”
This week cartoonist Mark Fiore made Internet and journalism history as the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize. Fiore took home the editorial cartooning prize for animations he created for SFGate, the website for the San Francisco Chronicle.
I spoke with Fiore about his big win and plans for his business. Fiore is not on staff at the Chronicle, or anywhere else; since 1999, he’s run a syndication business, selling his Flash animations à la carte to TV, newspaper, and magazine websites for about $300 a piece. (The price varies by size of the outlet.) In a typical month, he might have about eight clients. Before 1999, he ran a similar syndication business for his print cartoons, using a lower-price-per-image, higher-volume model.
When I asked about the next phase of his business, curious if it will include a mobile element, Fiore said he’s definitely hopeful about mobile devices. “I think the iPads and anything iPod to iPhone — to maybe a product not made by Apple — will be good or could be good for distributing this kind of thing,” he said.
But there’s just one problem. In December, Apple rejected his iPhone app, NewsToons, because, as Apple put it, his satire “ridicules public figures,” a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which bars any apps whose content in “Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”
The bottom line: Just shut up and support the president, you damned terrorist.
Imagine if another company, like Sony, came out with a device that could connect to the internet, run e-mail and a limited set of apps that Sony approved of, sold through Sony’s store.
Would there be a similar outrage?
Would Sony sell as many units?
Jobs has decided he’s happy making a few $billion from a product he has total control over, rather than (possibly) make many more $billions from something he doesn’t control.
I think that’s his right. But I’m still not going to buy an iPad. And if Microsoft, HP, Sony or anyone else come out with a “windows” tablet, with similar restrictions, I won’t buy it either.
chuck gets it.
Stanislav Datskovskiy gets it
#22 Like you, chuck’s a macfan