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Loading ...Goodbye, Washington Blade?
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is reporting that Window Media, owner of the Washington Blade (40 years old), Southern Voice (20 years old), South Florida Blade and other publications has ceased operating.
This is a great loss for the gay community.Until the rise of the internet, gay and lesbian community papers were our backbone. Often they were the only reliable way to find out about issues in the LGBT community. They are still one of the best places to get solid local reporting on stories that the mainstream media passes over (and that blogs and internet sites lack the resources to report).
From the Southern Voice Facebook page (thanks to Steve Rothaus):
With deepest regret, as editor of SoVo, I have to tell you that we arrived at the office to learn that our parent company, Window Media, has shut down. While the 20 years of SoVo have come to an end, our civil rights movement is only beginning. I am personally grateful to all of the staff, and to all of you who have had the courage to share your stories. It has been the honor of my life to help you tell them.
It’s very sad when we lose entities which helped bring out plight out into the light. So many book shops have been unable to survive also.
That’s sad news indeed.
Is the Washington Blade really closing? The website’s still running and they have a story from Friday that they’re looking for an intern. Did you get confirmation from them?
Hi Gregory – seeking it. The fact that it hasn’t been taken down makes me wonder if someone might rescue it.
Blade is off-line now. I really can’t express how sad this is – I freelanced for them for years, since 97 or so.
The Internet has steamrolled many a gay institution.
For years, I would get the Washington Blade every Friday when it hit the Blade newsboxes.
“The Blade” thanks for all the years you kept me OUT in the light..
Shame the Washington BLade couldn’t have remained independent of a conglomerant looking to buy up local papers only in the end to take them under with itself if that were the case I my memory serves me right.
I was not in favor of this at all. “Kind of the big fish that eats all the little fish and then itself dies one day.”
Now these towns like the DC area are left without a gay paper in print with contents like just mostly gay news, gay movies, gay plays, gay theater, listings of gay organizations and gay social groups, gay-friendly places to worship, etc. Stuff you can’t always get in The Washington Post and certainly never in that conservative Moonie rag The Washington Times.
And we are all reliant on paying a monthly internet subscription fee to our internet providers to get gay news. Unless we go to the library where viewing gay news does not depend on a monthly internet and e-mail suscription to a provdider.
And that gay internet news may or may not have local gay news specific to a town or city like the DC area where I live and gay entertainment news for just your area.
Can’t just go to the Metro subway station newsbox, to the Lambda Rising bookstore, library etc to get the gay news of just DC area anymore. My handicapped friend with muscular dystrophy used to know all the local gay news and entertainment from The Washington Blade that he used to have sent through the mail to him. Now that is one more thing he can’t have to read while his health gradually declines. He can’t drive a car and depends on friends like me and on the local DC area Metro Access for the handicapped to drive him around. He doesn’t have a personal computer in his little house and gets to the library once a week to use their computers. One day he will eventually be too frail to manage that. And now he has lost the primary way he had to keep up with the news etc of his local area gay community.
And Jennifer, the Blade is more than just offline, even worse than that IT IS ACTUALLY AND TOTALLY GONE WITHOUT EITHER THE PRINT NEWS THAT I LOVED FAR MORE THAN THIS ONLINE STUFF, OR THE ONLINE BLADE AS WELL. It’s floated up to Washington Blade heaven after 40 years of serving the Washington, Dc area.
The online stuff you have to quit looking at after a while to avoid eyestrain. The print paper is in your hand whenever you want it, and had more features to it than did the online version.