Gersh Kuntzman

Journalism

Kuntzman previously worked for the New York Post, writing the column "MetroGnome," which ran from 1994-2004. He had a weekly column for Newsweek online that ran from Jan. 2001-July 2005.

In 2005, Kuntzman became editor of The Brooklyn Paper, a group of community newspapers covering Kings County, New York. During his tenure, he won awards for Editor of the Year and Columnist of the Year from the Suburban Newspapers of America. His editorial writing also won awards from the Independent Free Papers of America. That organization also gave The Brooklyn Paper its Vic Jose Award in 2009. In that same year, The Brooklyn Paper was bought by the Community Newspaper Group, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Kuntzman gave mainstream coverage to the 2008 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island.

In 2010, CNG named him editor of four more print editions, including the Park Slope Courier. In 2011, those editions were consolidated under one name, Brooklyn Courier.

In January, 2012, Kuntzman left The Brooklyn Paper to teach journalism at the City University's graduate school of journalism. As part of that course, Kuntzman also ran the Fort Greene-Clinton Hill blog for the New York Times.

In 2012, Kuntzman became deputy managing editor for news at the New York Daily News, where he later became a columnist until 2016.

In 2016, Kuntzman became the center of widespread attention when he wrote an article titled "Firing an AR-15 is horrifying, menacing, and very very loud." In the article, Kuntzman says that he traveled to a gun range in Philadelphia to shoot a "military-style weapon," so that he could better understand such weapons' appeals in the wake of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. He says that "It felt to me like a bazooka - and sounded like a cannon." Kuntzman further described the experience by saying that "The recoil bruised my shoulder" and "The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick." The most controversial part of the article was when Kuntzman claimed that "The explosions - like a bomb - gave me a temporary form of PTSD." Kuntzman faced widespread criticism for the article, particularly the claim that he suffered from PTSD, with some critics saying that such a claim diminished the severity of PTSD suffered by veterans. Kuntzman later wrote another article further criticizing gun owners, but apologizing for the remarks about PTSD.

In April 2016, Kuntzman has criticized U.S. government's drone assassination program, and has even implied that the Obama administration may be guilty of war crimes. He also wanted President Obama to apologize for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Following the assassination of Andrei Karlov, Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov on 19 December 2016, Kuntzman compared his murder by Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş to the assassination of Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Jewish student Herschel Grynszpan, saying "justice has been served." The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman wrote on her Facebook page to Kuntzman: "you have said that the fight of the Jewish people against anti-Semitism in 1930s amounts to the terrorist ways of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra ... Are they really the same to you?"

In 2017, he began work as breaking news editor of Newsweek.

Fiction

Kuntzman authored HAIR! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness and Chrismukkah: The Official Guide to the World's Best-Loved Holiday. He co-wrote the off-Broadway play SUV: The Musical with songwriter Marc Dinkin, which was featured at the New York International Fringe Festival 2005. The next year he satirized the newspaper industry with another musical, Stop the Presses.

He co-wrote (with Dinkin) and produced the musical "Murder at the Food Coop," a satire of the Park Slope Food Coop, at the Fringe Festival in the summer of 2016.

Personal life

Kuntzman described himself as a supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.