Monday, January 18, 2010
News The state of gay media
Posted by Web Editor on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:11 PM
By Scott Henry and Patrick Saunders
When Georgia's first gay, African-American lawmaker, Simone Bell, formally took her seat in the state House of Representatives last week, the occasion marked a rare progressive milestone – for the South, anyway.
Too bad no newspapers were paying attention.
"The mainstream media, and even the alternative media, isn't going to cover the gay community with the same level of detail that a gay newspaper would," says frustrated state Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates, during a break in House action.
Drenner, who became Georgia's first gay state elected official in 2000, laments the November closing of Southern Voice as a major setback for Atlanta's gay community. Bell's first day on the job wasn't the only story that seemed to fall through the cracks in the wake of the sudden demise of the state's premiere gay weekly. Just days after the 21-year-old newspaper was shuttered, Chamblee banned discrimination against gay city workers, a story that didn't appear in the AJC until nearly a month later.
Also, Ed Scruggs, an 80-year-old veteran activist who'd marched in the Atlanta Pride parade only two weeks earlier, died. But with SoVo gone, there would be no print obituary recounting Scruggs' contributions to gay causes, only a short article on the Project Q media website – a situation that concerns Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, the state's largest gay rights group.
"If younger gays can't read about people like Ed, they won't understand the struggles that got us to where we are today," says Graham, who believes SoVo served a critical role in a place that the current issue of the Advocate crowns as the "gayest city in America."
"It's imperative that Atlanta have a gay media outlet," he adds, "because it helps bring the community together by covering stories, events, groups and politics that are important to us."
Of course, it's not as if there aren't plenty of folks competing to fill SoVo's shoes – and market niche.
Continue Reading "The state of gay media"
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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