Kunkel Awards Created

Bill Kunkel, left foreground, with Dan Steffan, right (and Frank Lunney in rear) at the 1970 Lunacon. Photo by Andrew Porter.

Bill Kunkel, left foreground, with Dan Steffan, right (and Frank Lunney in rear) at the 1970 Lunacon. Photo by Andrew Porter.

Nominations are being taken for the inaugural Kunkel Awards for Video Game Journalism through February 14, 2016.

The new award, authorized by the Society for Professional Journalists, recognizes excellence in video game journalism. There will be five Kunkel Award categories: Excellence in News Reporting, Excellence in Feature Writing, Excellence in News Video/Streaming, Excellence in Feature Video/Streaming, and Excellence in Photography/ Illustration/ Infographic.

Why Kunkel? While Kunkel’s name registers with me as a fanartist who drew cartoons for Arnie Katz’ Focal Point in the 1970s, another Kunkel and Katz collaboration, the “Arcade Alley” column in Video magazine, helped invent video game journalism, as the New York Times declared in Kunkel’s 2011 obituary.

The Kunkel Award winners will be selected by a two-step process: the entries will be nominated by the public, and SPJ judges will choose the winners.

Entries need to have been published in 2015, in English or with an available translation, and can be from anywhere, from a national website or a personal blog.

The judges will be “professional journalists working outside the gaming press, but with varying degrees of knowledge about it.”

The judging criteria will be accuracy, balance, clarity, verve, and being true to the SPJ Code of Ethics.

The awards are the brainchild of SPJ national board member Michael Koretzky, who will serve as director but not as a judge. The Kunkel Award was unveiled last week, and Koretzky says he has already received 104 nominations representing 33 websites and webcasters.

Where does Koretzky fit into gaming journalism’s controversy-riddled landscape? He helped plan AirPlay, the live and Livestreamed forum for GamerGate proponents and opponents held in Miami last August that was interrupted by a bomb threat. He’s interested in knowledgeable and ethical coverage of the gaming field. At AirPlay participants debated such questions as:

How should the mainstream media cover controversies like GamerGate? How does a reporter interview an “online leaderless movement” and still make deadline? What should the editor know before posting the story?

AirPlay gathered a range of speakers including Derek Smart, representing game developers, Ren LaForme and Lynn Walsh representing mainstream journalism, and Allum Bokhari, Mark Ceb, and Ashe Schow representing GamerGate, as well as GG sympathizers Milo Yiannopolous, Christina Hoff Sommers and Cathy Young.

Koretzky argues the Kunkel Award will fill a need for a national award for video game journalism that is evident from the field’s popularity and business handle:

Those who play, buy, and cover video games already know why…
•People: 155 million Americans “regularly” play video games. Only 126 million voted in the 2012 presidential election.
•Money: The U.S. video game industry raked in more than $22 billion last year. That’s more than the NFL ($11 billion) and Major League Baseball ($9 billion) combined.

[Via SF Site News.]

14 thoughts on “Kunkel Awards Created

  1. Let me just say that the name of the award is kind of close to swedish slang for testicles.

  2. So their going to try to make it about ethics in journalism? The ethics statement at the website looks to be problematic for gaming journalists as so many get free versions of the games and also socialize with gamers & fans.

    I can’t tell what they hope to accomplish with this. Well other than to give people an award for stuff. They are encouraging GG & anti-GG submissions as well as gamer & non-gamer sources according to my understanding of their blog.

  3. Hampus Eckerman:

    Let me just say that the name of the award is kind of close to swedish slang for testicles.

    Considered apart from the common human dislike of having one’s own name treated humorously, from what I knew of Bill Kunkel I don’t think he would have minded the idea of an award name that could be confused with the word for testicles.

  4. I can’t tell what they hope to accomplish with this. Well other than to give people an award for stuff.

    Looks fairly obviously an attempt to make ‘ethics in video game journalism’ a thing they are obviously encouraging and promoting. Usually when a gater talks about eivgj one rolls ones eyes and asks how rape threats fit into that. Is this a real and worthwhile thing? Don’t know, don’t care enough about it to read up the proposal properly, but this definitely gives the appearance of a more positive thing.

  5. If I understand this right, the judges are going to be gaters, gater sympathizers and journalists–and probably the journalists were chosen for *not* opposing gamergate.

    I’m not expecting a big surprise twist ending here.

  6. So their going to try to make it about ethics in journalism?

    The Society of Professional Journalists* has cared about ethics in journalism since long before any GamerGater was a glimmer in his emotionally distant, affection withholding father’s eye. The group was founded in 1909. I trust it enough to have faith that the Kunkel Awards will be a serious, troll-free attempt to honor excellent journalists who cover videogames.

    * – This blog post gets the name wrong.

  7. rcade:

    * – This blog post gets the name wrong.

    Thanks for pointing that out — it’s fixed now.

  8. I don’t object in principle to an award for excellence in gaming journalism – but I’m a little concerned about GamerGate brigading it, since the initial step is public.

  9. @Meredith

    It looks like they’re aware of it, as the award page linked above states:

    The number of times an entry is nominated means nothing. In fact, we won’t tell the judges how often an entry was nominated. So no need to stuff the ballot box.

    Looks like Lessons Have Been Learnt from the Hugo 2015 kerfuffle. But it certainly puts a great deal of power in the hands of the judges, and I look forward to their shortlisting. That should give everyone some idea as to how serious this effort is.

    There were a few articles that I found really impressive. Let me see if I can locate any of them.

  10. @snowcrash

    Ah! I missed that bit. (Fuzzybrain.) Thank you. 🙂 That’s definitely reassuring.

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