I'm back from the South By Southwest Interactive in Austin and I thought I'd bring you some belated tidbits from the panel I was on: How Comics Journalism Is Saving Your Media.

Sarah Jaffee, an editor at Alternet and our panel's moderator, Storfied the tweets from the panel so you can see how it all went down from people tweeting int he room. Publisher's Weekly also did a write up of our talk you can read here.

One big announcement made in Austin was by Erin Polgreen, who was awarded a grant to launch Symbolia, "a tablet magazine of illustrated journalism that pairs incendiary reportage with beautiful illustrations and comics."

Susie Cagle, who has contributed reporting to Cartoon Movment, presented a short video of her Occupy Oakland coverage.

Cagle was recently awarded the Cartoonist Award from the Society of Prefessional Journalists in Northern California. She penned a great acceptance speech, Even the Cartoonists, that speaks of her difficulty finding acceptance among some of her peers – her non-freelance, non-cartoonist peers – and arresting officers, who don't hold comics in as high regard as we do around here.

My work spans multiple mediums, but my illustrated work tends to define me. Indeed, this award is for the “cartoonist” category — a definition I think most would agree applies to me, but one I think people tend to associate with editorial cartooning and caricature. I consider my work illustrated reportage; I don’t seek to exaggerate with my drawings, but to document.

-Matt Bors