What a Difference a Pulitzer Makes to Apple

Mark Fiore, who won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this week animated editorial cartoons that ran on SFGate.com, is seeing the power of a prize win. While he saw his iPhone app, NewsToons, rejected last year by Apple because its satirical content lampooned public figures, he has been given another chance by Apple, for some "strange" reason.

The Pulitzer Prize Board allowed online-only entries for the first time this year. Thus, Fiore's award is the first time since the category of editorial cartooning was created in 1922 that the Pulitzer has gone to an artist whose work did not appear in print. Meanwhile, Sherri Fink of ProPublica, a non-profit online journalism service, won the investigative reporting prize.

Apple has contacted Fiore and asked him to resubmit the app. Originally, the rejection for NewsToons was because it violated, depending on your point of view, section 3.3.14 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

"Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory."

This isn't the first questionable rejection from the App Store. We could list scores of them. Here's an example of the humor that won Fiore the Pulitzer, by the way.