The staff at PGN breathed a big sigh of relief last week when we sent our commemorative 40th-anniversary issue to the printer. The 100-page special issue was quite an endeavor, one that took us about six months to piece together.
In pulling together archival materials for the edition, we learned a lot about PGN’s history. We got to see the stories and series that broke ground, the initiatives we launched to keep pace with the changing journalism industry and even the times when we could have benefitted from a dose of education. We have several employees who’ve devoted their entire careers to PGN, and we’ve heard many tales of PGN days past from them. But getting to see the organization’s 40-year development through our own pages was an eye-opening experience.
And it was one that will be beneficial to shaping our work moving forward. As we look to the next chapter of PGN’s history, we do so with knowledge of our strengths and awareness of the areas on which we could improve.
We will continue to strive to fairly and effectively represent all members of our ever-diversifying community. We will work to cover the issues, events and developments that affect our readers. We will recommit to developing a better understanding of the roots of division within our community and explore those issues within our pages. We will invite readers to use our publication as a unifying platform.
Immersing ourselves in PGN’s history gave our staff a better appreciation for the power of this entity. As the LGBT community’s place in society has evolved over the years, PGN’s role in the community has also changed; this paper has meant many different things to many different people.
The LGBT community is certainly not a fixed entity, and we will continue to transition with the changing times. We look to our readers to keep us true to that commitment: Tell us when we need to take a stronger position on an issue, more proactively encourage discussion or more effectively reach a segment of our community.
This publication has always embraced change, but in four decades, we’ve never wavered in our commitment to being a community newspaper. We look forward to another 40 years of serving as a voice for and of our community.