For those of us in LGBT media, it was a sad week. Our brothers and sisters who work in a variety of LGBT newspapers run by Window Media showed up at their offices Monday and discovered that their publications had closed, including Washington Blade, Atlanta’s Southern Voice, David magazine, 411 magazine and South Florida Blade. That alone is a lot of employees, but in recent months the same company also closed down Genre magazine and the online-only Houston Voice, and it or members of its management had connections with HX, which also folded. To say this is the biggest failure in LGBT-media history is an understatement. That said, what does it say about LGBT media? The short answer: nothing.
While media outlets in general are going through changes, there are some basic publishing lessons that can be learned from this, and in some ways it even makes LGBT media stronger.
The first rule of local LGBT publishing is to remain relevant in your community. And the way to do that is not to be afraid of taking positions and allowing free discussion in your publication — even if it opposes your position. Don’t sugarcoat the news. If an LGBT organization is not doing its job or something is not on the up and up, it’s the media’s job to expose it. Make local news your priority, news that only you will be publishing. And don’t be afraid of controversy. Remember the basics of news in every story: who, what, when, where and why.
Now to the business side. If you do your journalism correctly, you will be relevant, trusted and a necessity to your community. That brings readers, which brings advertisers, which pays the bills. Your first line of advertisers should be the community itself, which should support its publication of record. Next are the gay-friendly and non-gay businesses in gay neighborhoods and the non-gay businesses frequented by the LGBT community. And once that is in line, it should cover your bottom line. Any national advertising that comes your way is the cream of the business.
Of course, you still need basic business practices and leadership to bring it together. Here’s a possible example of how the above rules applied to the Washington Blade. Window Media and their other partners began their course of destruction when Chris Crane discredited and cheapened what was one of the nation’s leading LGBT publications (he even included a “Bitch Session” column and hired a former escort as a political columnist). That led to a decline in advertising, which resulted in cutting ad rates to undercut competition. At the same time, David Unger, head of Window, went on a publication-buying spree with money guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. They had a sinking ship and went further in debt. When Crane was let go/resigned, the Blade began to regain its stature but, still under Unger’s leadership it continued to buy other publications and cut benefits. Various business arrangements with other publications, such as HX, entered the Blade world. Who owned what became blurred. Lack of trust from readers and advertisers, a possible fight among partners and an ensuing host of lawsuits spelled the end.
This cocktail of failure was about Window and Window alone. It affects the employees of those publications and the cities they serve, but not any other local publications anywhere in the nation. And there’s going to be a happy ending. Already the former staff of the Blade is forming a new publication for D.C. It will rise like a phoenix, with other LGBT media around the nation in full support. Likewise, it seems one of the Window executives is forming a new publication to serve the area previously covered by the South Florida Blade. This all shows growth in gay media.
After you take care of your local base, there’s more good news for LGBT media at the national level. Rivendell Media CEO Todd Evans tells me that his national sales to local LGBT media for December appear to be the strongest of recent years and he predicts even higher sales in 2010.
Media, whether it be newspapers, TV, radio, movies, magazines or the Internet, continuously evolves. Our job in media — gay and non-gay — is to continue to evolve and serve our communities. If we do that, keeping an eye on change, we’ll remain relevant and an asset to our communities.
Mark Segal is PGN publisher. He can be reached at [email protected] .
