Chris Geidner Wins NLGJA Journalist of the Year Award

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association has honored BuzzFeed legal editor Chris Geidner with its 2014 Journalist of the Year Award.

Geidner has expanded BuzzFeed's coverage of LGBT issues considerably since joining the site, and BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith cited his work on marriage in particular. "We're so proud of this well-deserved recognition for Chris's work, and of the blend of hard-core beat reporting and high-altitude features that showed how marriage could and should be a frontline beat and one of the most important stories of the decade," Smith said.

In his acceptance speech Saturday at the NLGJA conference in Chicago, Geidner lauded recent progress toward LGBT equality but also noted that there still is work to do in creating safe and diverse workplaces for LGBT journalists. "When we're able to be ourselves as journalists, we're able to do a better job," Geidner said, "There are still difficulties. There are still areas of the country, of the world, where it is very difficult to be out -- as a gay journalist, as a lesbian journalist, as a bisexual journalist, and certainly as a trans journalist. And those are things that we need to keep working on."

This isn't the first time Geidner has been honored by NLGJA. In 2012, Geidner was chosen as the winner of the Sarah Petit Memorial Award For Excellence in LGBT Media for his work with the Washington, DC-based Metro Weekly.

Also among those by NLGJA honored this year were Lila Shapiro of The Huffington Post, receiving the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media; Michelle Garcia of The Advocate, getting the Excellence In Multimedia Award for "The State of Pride in Sports"; Sunnivie Brydum of The Advocate and photographer D. David Robinson, receiving the Excellence in photojournalism award for "We Are Here: LGBTI in Uganda"; Mark S. King (a contributor to sister site HIV Plus) taking the Excellence in Blogging Award for his blog My Fabulous Disease; and Tracy Baim of Windy City Times honored for Excellence in Opinion/Op-Ed Writing for "The Content of Our Character: Trayvon and Us."

Watch Chris Geidner's acceptance speech below, courtesy of Windy City Times: