News this afternoon (h/t FishbowlDC) that Chris Geidner of D.C.’s MetroWeekly has been hired to cover the LGBT/gay marriage beat for Buzzfeed out of their new D.C. bureau. Here’s what Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith (formerly of Politico) had to say about the hire:
Chris Geidner is the fastest, best-sourced reporter on his beat. The marriage wars and gay rights battles are some of the key stories of the decade; stories that readers from BuzzFeed to social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit care about deeply. It deserves to be treated with a fair mind as a front-line political beat, and Chris is uniquely positioned to turn BuzzFeed into a hub for that coverage.
Here’s what Andrew Sullivan had to say about the announcement:
Every now and again, a real star emerges. And Ben Smith at Buzzfeed has now nabbed Chris Geidner, one of the best gay reporters out there, to chart gay issues through this campaign and beyond. Dish readers have already come to know Chris’s work in the gay press. This is a sign that the mainstream takes this story – and the accurate telling of it – as seriously as it should.
In a tweet, Geidner credits Sean Bugg and Randy Shulman for discovering him and giving him a national platform.
Geidner won NLGJA’s Excellence in Journalism award for news writing in 2011 for his coverage of DADT. He won second place for online journalism and was runner-up for LGBT journalist of the year. This year, he was the co-winner of a GLAAD award for magazine writing for his coverage of the Defense of Marriage Act.