Russell Frank, associate professor of communications at Penn State University and member of the NSNC Board of Directors, was recently published in The Washington Post with a by-lined story about Herb Block, a four-time Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist at The Washington Post. Frank is serving as a consultant to the Library of Congress for its Herbock Oral History Project.
Ten years after the death of Herb Block, the Library of Congress is collecting stories from those who knew and worked with the legendary cartoonist. One collegue recalled Block as “an eccentric old guy shuffling around The Post newsroom in a ratty sweater.” However, his friends want him to be remembered for his works rather than his quirks.
Block had a 55 year career drawing political cartoons for The Washington Post. He is known for skewering former President, Richard Nixon, during the Watergate years. One of Block’s best-known Nixon cartoons was published within a week of the Watergate break-in and showed footprints leading from the Watergate to the White House.
Russell Frank who writes for StateCollege.com has placed highly in the NSNC column-writng contest for two consecutive years. He is best known by NSNC members for his work in helping organize the student scholarship contest of NSNC, which presents three scholarship awards per year to deserving college journalists.
Frank worked as a reporter, editor and columnist at newspapers in California and Pennsylvania for 13 years before joining the journalism faculty at Penn State in 1998. His academic training is as a folklorist, a field in which he holds a PhD. In an interview for the college news Frank said, writers need to have confidence that “whatever you choose to write about, you can write about it in an interesting way.”
Read Frank’s article in The Washington Post for more information about Herb Block and the Herblock Project.
