The news on Monday that Window Media had finally closed its doors (literally) and that its chain of papers was officially kaput didn't seem to register much. Maybe that's because its two NYC titles, Genre and New York Blade, had already perished earlier this year. But the fact that the Washington Blade, a paper with a sizable reputation, as well as 21-year-old Southern Voice, one of the last papers focused on gay and lesbian issues in the South, disappeared is reason to worry. I've followed the whole thing from the sidelines because (1) I used to work for Window Media since they used to own the New York Press and (2) one of the first newspapers I ever wrote for was Southern Voice. The best parsing of the situation I've read was written by Steve Weinstein over at Edge (an online competitor to many of these failed gay rags). Weinstein was able to assemble all the moving pieces better than most because he actually used to be the editor of the New York Blade as well as a short stint as publisher and interim editor of New York Press (we worked together for a couple of months in 2006 when he hired me as the managing editor).
As Weinstein tells it "the problems with Window Media had deeper roots than just the ones common to all such publications. Born of an attempt to amass a nationwide chain of local publications, Window Media was originally the product of three people: lawyer-turned-journalist Chris Crain; William Waybourn, the former head of GLAAD; and entrepreneur David Unger... Unger, Crain and Waybourn went on a buying spree. They took over the Houston Voice and the New York Blade. Unger also bought national gay men’s lifestyle magazine Genre, David and 411, as well as the New York Press, an alternative weekly."
So in some ways it just seems like a matter of hubris. Greedy guys who want to absorb all the little ones in various markets so they can build up a big ol' gay fortress and start printing pink dollars. But it didn't turn out that way. Could it be old-fashioned homophobia? Read what Unger was quoted as saying: "David Unger, however, puts the blame squarely on national advertisers. In an interview with EDGE, Unger called the strategy of assembling a national gay media network 'brilliant. Everybody did their job. It was the homophobic national advertisers. If you’re going to blame anybody, blame it on Target and WalMart, and Proctor and Gamble, and Ford and Coca-Cola, because they’re the ones who should be advertising nine years later,' he said, referring to the founding of Window in 2001."While for many post-gays it doesn't seem important to have gay-focused
newspapers, the fact of the matter that in many other urban and
semi-urban areas of the country, the mainstream media doesn't bother to
report on gay-related issues. With the daily Atlanta Journal
Constitution and alt-weekly Creative Loafing in Atlanta both going
through their own death throes, it could be very soon when there is NO
ONE reporting on many of the issues that mean life or death (literally) for men and women living in these communities.
But I'm still looking for the eventual silver-lining. Maybe it's all just a natural progression. The moneybags buy things up. It doesn't work. And someone/something emerges and takes its place. Bigger, better, stronger, uncut (so to speak). Blade editor Kevin Naff told Michael Calderone of Politico: "The Blade staff is united and ready to continue the paper's
long-standing mission. The first meeting for our new venture is Tuesday
and we welcome the community's input as we move forward." See, you can't keep a good journalist down (for long).
