Nation's largest gay newspaper publisher closes
Done Being Politically Correct
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ATLANTA � The nation's largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay
and lesbian community has shut down.
Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, said
she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying
parent company Window Media LLC had closed down.
She said the company's other publications � including the Washington
Blade, Houston Voice and South Florida Blade � were also being closed.
"From my understanding, there was just no more money to keep these
companies running," she said in a telephone interview as she sat with
her former employees outside their locked Atlanta office. "We had all
been told that the companies would be sold. The fact that we were shut
down was a complete shock."
The company's financial trouble stemmed from a number of factors.
Besides an industrywide drop in advertising revenue amid the economic
meltdown, mainstream publications are writing more about gay and lesbian
issues, reducing dependency on niche publications such as Window
Media's.
Steven Myers, co-president of Window Media in Washington, D.C., declined
comment.
He said he'd be able to talk more about the closures later this week.
The company had been struggling financially since last year. The
company's majority stockholder, New York City-based Avalon Equity
Partners, was taken over by the U.S. Small Business Administration in
August 2008, Douglas-Brown said.
Avalon owner David Unger said he was "not involved any more," then hung
up the phone abruptly.
Just last month, the Washington Blade celebrated its 40th anniversary.
News editor Joshua Lynsen declined comment on the newspaper's closure.
"Window Media long provided a very special outlet for the gay community
to learn about itself way before there were a lot of other places to
find that type of thing," said Michael Musto, an openly gay writer for
the Village Voice in New York, which is owned by Village Voice Media
Holdings. "This was the gay community writing about itself, and that's a
voice we should never lose."
Flawed activism cost queers their media platforms.
Pat Magroyne
<reclaim.amer...@2010.bootobama.org> wrote:
> http://www.gainesville.com/article/20091116/ARTICLES/911169908/1008/W...
They weren't really "platforms". They were gay-specific
publications. Straights didn't read them.
They've closed because there's not much need for them anymore.