Mark Fiore, who on Monday became the first online-only cartoonist to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, told the Nieman Journalism Lab in an interview that Apple had rejected his NewsToons app for iPhone last December.

Fiore, who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning - for weekly animated videos published on The San Francisco Chronicle’s website SFGate. com -, said that when he submitted his NewsToons app to the App Store last year, he was not aware of “the whole concept of getting rejected for ridiculing public figures.”

As per the App Store policy, political cartoons are a violation of Apple’s license agreement with developers, as they may fall in the category of “objectionable” content – that is, content which “may be considered obscene, pornographic or defamatory.”

However, following Fiore’s Pulitzer Prize and the news of his NewsToons app’s rejection, published in an article on niemanlab. org on Thursday, Apple has encouraged the cartoonist to resubmit his application, which Fiore did on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, commenting on the reconsideration of the rejected NewsToons app, Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded to a customer query, saying in an e-mail message that the rejection “was a mistake that’s being fixed.”