This past week marked this editor’s one-year anniversary at the helm of Philadelphia Gay News. And to say the last 12 months have been a rollercoaster would be an understatement.
I came into the editor position knowing that there would be challenges, but that cognizance didn’t quite prepare me for the crash-course I got as I struggled to climb the steep learning curve.
First, I had to learn the day-to-day process — editing deadlines, page layouts, ad sizes, mazes of digital files, word counts and more. That in itself produced an ever-present headache for a number of weeks. But, I ultimately eased into a routine that countless editors before me have adopted to get PGN out the door, on time, every single week.
Next, I turned my attention to developing relationships with the team that helps bring PGN to fruition. From our dedicated ad staff, which helps to keep the business side of PGN afloat, to our creative minds in the art department to our in-house staff writers who populate the pages of PGN to our publisher at the helm to our brilliant copy editor to the sea of freelancers whose columns and contributions diversify our publication, I saw just how integral our teamwork is. I learned what to expect from the sometimes-tardy columnists or ever-punctual columnists, to distinguish our writers’ styles from one another and to rely on the experience and expertise of our advertising and art staff. The PGN staff is comprised of a diverse group of individuals who butt heads like any other staff — but I’ve seen that our individuality is what helps us function so well as a team. We each bring our own selves fully to this publication and the past year has made me immensely grateful for each person’s contributions.
It’s now come time to start looking at the bigger-picture issues — how to help advance the newspaper into the digital age, how to better represent all of our readers and how to reach new segments of the LGBT and ally community. I had naively hoped to start this process months ago but, as I quickly found out, the news world does not stop for you: Each time we predicted a slow news week, breaking-news stories would flood us.
But with a trusted staff ready and able to cover the web of LGBT news stories already shaping up for the next year, we are ready to tackle these issues head-on. In the coming months, we will be introducing new digital efforts, new columns and working diligently to open PGN up to our readers. As much as PGN is a product of our in-house staffers, this is a publication dedicated to our community and, as such, should be both relatable and accessible to the myriad members of our community.
The newspaper industry is ever-evolving, as is the LGBT community. And we are working hard at PGN to make sure that we stay ahead of those changes — but never stray from our core mission of providing a high-quality journalistic product that the Philadelphia-area LGBT community can call its own.