The New Yorker magazine is known for its cartoons (site) as much as for its articles. You can join the party by submitting a caption for other cartoons in their contest.
If you’re a U.S. resident, 18 years old or older, you can enter and possibly win a print of the cartoon with your caption and the artist’s signature. Before that, the three finalists (with names, cities, and states) will have their captions published in the magazine in order to be voted on.
As for the regular cartoons, Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, said in a November 2006 interview, that he’s looking for a variety of humor: gags, ridicule, incongruity, “Theory of Mind” (showing a character’s perspective), “ludic” (playful silliness, which can be somewhat subversive presumably in the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Monty Python tradition), and so forth.
More generally, Mankoff said in a 2004 Q&A that he wants cartoons that are “funny and communicate some idea about our culture.”
See also:
- Book collections and more of New Yorker cartoons
- 2004 radio interview with Robert Mankoff