Meet Gideon Grudo.

Actually, before I do that, let me explain…

Judges for journalism contests are almost always anonymous. I’ve judged high school, college, and professional contests and never told anyone but my wife (who didn’t give a crap as long as it didn’t cut into our wine drinking).

That wasn’t because I feared criticism — any journalist who can’t handle that should become a yoga instructor — but because I worried about bribery. Journalists are paid so little, it wouldn’t take much to tempt us.

So the three Kunkel judges are toiling in obscurity. But today we reveal one of them. Why? Because some gamers and gaming journalists have mused aloud that the Kunkel Awards are judged by ideologues.

Of course, they mean ideologues who don’t believe in their ideology. Apparently, people who think exactly like you can’t be biased.

Our three judges are all editors, which means their day jobs involve reading lots of other people’s stuff. One of them is Gideon Grudo, digital platforms editor at the Air Force Magazine in Washington, DC.

Before that, Grudo was editor of SFGN, the largest gay newspaper in the southeast United States, even though he’s not gay.

So he’s had what we in this business call a “non-traditional career.” He didn’t start at a local newspaper and work his way up to a national newspaper (although he did intern at a Top 25 newspaper and hated it).

That’s influenced his opinion of gaming journalism…

Gaming journalism doesn’t get the attention it deserves from the high-brow, black-ink journalists who generally determine which awards hiring editors care about, so we don’t have those prestigious awards programs for this journalism.

Grudo’s fellow judges have also pursued non-traditional careers, which he actually considers a qualification for Kunkel judging…

It’s a good thing my friends and I aren’t prestigious — we’re the perfect fit to push gaming journalism into the venerated halls of famous awards, where smarter people than us can roll their eyes and take over.

At the same time, Grudo undersells himself. First, he holds a prestigious gig within SPJ. He’s the chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee, the self-described “watchdog of press freedoms across the nation.” After the Ethics Committee, it’s probably SPJ’s most important mission.

Second, Grudo wrote a story – on his own time – that I consider one of the best ever about Reddit. He sourced it with mods from a pro-GamerGate subreddit, although to be clear, he didn’t take sides in the GamerGate controversy. He simply interviewed the mods because they were the only ones willing to go on the record and not be anonymous sources (which is a plague upon journalism).

Because Grudo believes mainstream media should cover Reddit, he’ll answer questions – about journalism in general and the Kunkels in particular – on whatever subreddits will have him.

He concludes…

If you’re not Kunkeling, I hope you’re not decrying the state of gaming journalism. Let’s hoist up the best and shove down the rest, amirite?

If you want to reach Grudo directly, hit him up here.

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