My work as a paid professional writer is largely dependent on my relationships with editors. I prod and police myself to write here on my site. But for other sites and print publications there are gatekeepers. They stand between me and their audience, negociating money from them for words, ideas from me.

Last week I turned in an article about Ethics in Videogame Journalism. It was a great assignment - a culmination of issues I'd been thinking about and talking over for months. And it gave me a chance to find some new sources and learn more about a subject I care about: digital culture criticism (strongly defended by Wayne in this thread).

That assignment came as the result of a few hours I spent chatting with an editor at the Online Journalism Review. We shared a passion for electronic entertainment, curiousity about ethics and some determination to see better writing emerge around games. I need to find more editors like that.