I thought it was the SGN.

No, the SGN is proof that its dead.

I always thought it was poor writing on irrelevant topics. But what do I know.

Killed it? Um, but then, what do you call The Stranger?

Cato... there's a reason the writing is so poor at the gay press. Once upon a time openly gay writers couldn't find work at mainstream dailies, newsmagazines, even weeklies. So openly gay writers all wound up at the gay press. Perforce. So the gay press in the 60s, 70s, and 80s featured some very strong writing. But the social changes wrought by the gay and lesbian civil rights movement made it possible for writers and journalists to be out on the job at dailies, weeklies, newsmagazines, etc. (But not, it seems, on the teevee.) And ambitious gay writers abandoned the gay press in droves. And why shouldn't they?

The same thing happened to the African American press: dailies began hiring African American writers to cover the Civil Rights movement, and then the changes wrought by the Civil Rights movement integrated daily papers. The quality and relevance of the African American press collapsed as the best writers and editors left.

I'd say something.

Just like the negro leagues

@ Mr. Poe, please say something

@ Dan, I know, but those days are gone and now the SGN does poorly written stories on drag shows. But the SGN is GREAT fire starter for your fireplace!

Dan - take notes - from above comments

its is wrong - contraction - it's

Eastern WA thinks the Stranger is the gay press.

Hell, go further inland, and the Seattle Times is the gay press.

What about the Gay Press-ons? Dead or just passé?

#8

Huh, SGN doesn't cover drag hardly at all - has been years. You need to take a second look.

Their interview last week with the presenter of Monoply, big hit show, Mike Daisey, was the best in the city, by far.

Both Lisa Keen and Rex Wockner are national journalists of high esteem. SGN has features from both almost every week.

Yes I work there, not in editorial. So Dan does not like the SGN, what else is new? That goes back a decade.

How about some fact checking? Try sgn.org.

Hmmm...are you sure that gay men didn't get sick of being presented with magazines that all presumed no gay man would read or buy anything that didn't have a hairless gym bunny gracing it? Cause I know for damned sure that it pisses me off to see a clothing ad in a gay magazine that doesn't feature clothes, and instead looks like an ad for steroids or a sex club, and the rest of the magazine is identical, except for a one page interview with Margaret Cho as a fig leaf.

Oh, and I also think that well beyond the integration of gay writers into mainstream media is the mainstreaming of our issues. When you can do a daily roundup of gay issues culled from mainstream media resources, when the NYT does things like running four part series on gay youth in rural America (niche much?), when you have enough gay shows from various cable networks that you could spend 24 hours of every day watching them in syndication, what the fuck do you need a gay media for? Minority media is only useful when that minority is not being served by the mainstream media, and we're being catered to a decent amount right now.

Luckily, the Editor and Publisher denotes Lovely's "sexual preference". Somehow I thought that publications (except for the right wingers) had gotten past that stage... but obviously not. Maybe it means the work of the people involved with the "gay press" isn't done yet.

#10, E. Washington doesn't even know that the The Stranger exists.

In my personal experience (always was an E. WA resident until just recently) The Stranger didn't even come across that way until I started reading the SLOG, and that really only comes from the commenters.

@12

Thanks for disclosing that you work there. I think showing integrity counts for something. You wouldn't believe how many flacks come around trying to hide which company or campaign or agency they work for, as if you can't spot Astroturf a mile away.

i want to start the anti typical gay man magazine. you with my gatai?

i dunno...i've been reading gay newspapers since 1982 and they've always been shitty. I think the big difference is that now, OUT gay writers write for major papers instead of CLOSETED gay writers. The HeeHaw Weekly Fag Rags were usually badly written messes when they started in the 70's and 80's and the ones that hang on today continue that fine tradtion.

@12, you need to dream bigger...much bigger.

I don't think it killed just the press. The gay community as a group has weakened thanks to integration. Whatever happened to good old fashion repression? :) Ironically, it seems the right-wing is actually kind of winning by simply not fighting integration which has allowed the gay establishments to collapse.

You're right, Michael. There were always closeted fags at big papers.

But I wrote that gay weeklies featured "some very strong writing" back in the bad old days. I didn't say the writing was uniformly strong. Out gay writers and editors -- you know, gay folks with integrity -- back in the bad old days could only work for the gay press. The good stuff was mixed in with the bad (some of it very, very bad), but it was in there. Then the gay rights movement changed everything -- the good gay writers and editors already working for the gay press were hired away, leaving behind the crap gay writers. And papers that used to be 70% crap became 98% crap.

And I hate you, Michael Strangeways, I hate you soooooo much.

hmm, this also makes him one of the few native editors

Being a niche pub is usually what kills a niche pub. Your audience is very, very finite.

@17 Not with that grammar, I'm not. I'm a grammar Nazi.

But really, I think that the gay press is dying, and I'm not terribly sad to see it go. As I said, we're being served by the mainstream media, and not badly at that. As time goes by, our culture and issues will be included to a greater and greater degree. The only remnant of the gay press likely to survive that is pornography, and even that is likely to die in print format.

I wish Dan Savage would tell me he hates me some time. No fairz.

i'm confused Mr Poe...does dan really hate me or is this a schoolboy thing? He keeps pulling my hair and giving me titty twisters...

all right, Dan, I'll give you that there were a FEW good writers back in the day. The SF papers did some good reporting, (and maybe they still do; I don't read them) and it seems like the Washington Blade and the Boston paper used to get praise, too...I think the New York Native was always a joke, though and the LA papers were pretty bad. I've lived in Minneapolis and Kansas City prior to Seattle, and the gay rags in all three were/are pretty useless. And full disclosure, I WROTE for a Minneapolis rag back in the '80s (no, not news; a gossip thing that was about on a par with a Mark "Mom" Finley column-hey, I was 23!) and I saw first hand the amateur hour known as gay journalism. I think all the great gay journalists fled in the 80's to go work at the Big Boy papers or they all tried to get jobs at Spy or Vanity Fair. Or become Scientologists. Or sex columnists.

Dan is a teddy bear. He wuvz you.

mr poe, you've been spending time at "i can haz cheezburger" haven't you?

I have not. And now we are enemies.

Cato @8 -- NO! The terrible fonts and colors used by the SGN release carcinogens into the air when burned. In fact, they release carcinogens into the air even when VIEWED. Reading an issue of the SGN is worse for you than smoking a carton of cigarettes. In one go.

@30: Terrible colors and fonts? You can fault them on their publishing of press releases, but not their use of black text.
Jesus.

#30

Wish the breeders would comment on the breeder rags, plenty of them out there, Facts, Medium, Cap. Hill Times and many, many more - half assed weeklies of 12 - 18 pages. And by comparison, the SGN is a marvel.

Fnarf, you are such a stupid know it all. In this case you sound foolish.

Or, are you now coming out and are a learned spokesperson voice for all things gay .... bad fonts.... are you kidding?

33 years and going strong ... despite the font police aka. the Fnarfs of the world.

John, and yes, I work at SGN.

Hey, Michael... a lot of the good writer and editors at gay papers in the 70s and early 80s... uh... died in the mid-80s.

I'll read pretty much anything I can pick up for free. The SGN is uninteresting to me, sure, but it is also really, really ugly. And grammatically challenged, not unlike your post, John. The Facts and The Medium are pretty bad, too. I like The North Seattle Herald-Outlook and the Ballard News-Tribune OK, though; a bit boring, but they get the job done. Sort of. They don't usually make me cry out in pain.

blog/slog posting is not graded in the high school of life

sorry to dispel your perfect world scenario

Fanrf, are you sure you are not just an old nit picking quean?

and frankly, the politics of the moment are far more interesting than this thread

best, John

Can someone tell me why it even frickin' matters that he's gay? Can he do the job or not?

SGN is a fucking joke. Every time I've picked it up, I've thought about going hetero.

Why all the hate? I don't mind the SGN at all.
Section 1 is press releases and mostly boring shit like interviews with legislators. But section 2 has fair music and stage reviews, and hilariously bad movie reviews from their Pakistani writer. It's worth reading for those ALONE

thanks, Dan, for playing the death card...But there is one good story involving a dead, gay, and brilliant journalist. The revolting Fred Phelps klan came to protest at Randy Shilt's funeral in '94 and before the douchebags could get their protest signs unloaded, mourners started throwing shit at them and chased them down the street...I don't think they ever tried to picket in the Bay area again. Sadly, it doesn't appear that anyone else has ever taken this tactic with the Phelps/Westboro klan at funeral protests.

I am ABSOLUTELY an old, nitpicking quean, right down to the archaic spelling. Heterosexual, though.