Recently, an article at Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab on the viability of gay news sites has prompted the LGBT news media industry to do some self-examination. Award-winning veteran journalist Karen Ocamb explores the rise of the LGBT media in the 80s and examines its mainstreaming — and how its future affects us all.
I’m not an advertising exec so I can’t speak to the “unique set of problems†that might exist for LGBT sales people and the companies, corporations and non-profits with which they must negotiate for revenue.
That said, I think the Neiman article, “How niche is too niche? The case of gay news blogs,” raises an important on-going issue: as the LGBT movement for civil rights matures, how “queer†do most LGBTs want to be? This is the old argument between sexual outlaws and assimilationists, between the identifiable “third sex†minority Harry Hay described in the 1950s and the more mainstream “we’re just like you, only gay†crowd.
Ironically, from my perspective, the LGBT community first caught the attention of marketers during the AIDS crisis. Gay magazines such as “Frontiers,” where I am now the news editor, flourished because of the sex ads in the back that allowed terrified gay people to “meet†each other over the phone. Alternative publications such as the LA Weekly at first decried these ads – and then mimicked them once they recognized the revenue the ads produced.
These were the precursors to the online “personals†that helped sites such as Gay.com become popular and appear to be extraordinary moneymakers.
Meanwhile, in 1991, presidential candidate Bill Clinton specifically reached out to gays and gays promised – and did raise early money for his campaign. Politicos took notice. AIDS Project Los Angeles had been bringing in huge stars like Elizabeth Taylor to their events when gay Hollywood decided to turn to civil rights, with entertainment attorney Alan Hergott and manger Barry Krost hosting an historic fundraiser for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Thanks to efforts by in-house attorney Elizabeth Birch, Apple Computers started offering domestic partnership benefits – starting a domino effect of in-house personnel policy changes among other Fortune 500 companies.
This prompted those companies to want to target the gay community as a niche and gay marketers used the trope of gays as loyal customers with disposable incomes to reach out to other companies like Volvo and Capital One with gay celebrity spokespeople like tennis pro Martina Navratilova. Even the publishing world – especially St. Martin’s Press – created a gay niche. It was all the rage.
But America changed in 2000, becoming more conservative with George W. Bush and the niche became unsustainable. There was great excitement when the online “star†PlanetOut became the first LGBT IPO on Wall Street only to crash and burn and became absorbed with great debt into the Here Networks.
Now we worry about the financial fate of anything LGBT specific. Frontiers magazine, founded in 1982, merged with IN LA magazine a while ago and is holding its own in Southern California. As with most publications, we have an online site that also has a blog where I post news stories, as do the other editors and writers. But I am exhausted working on major news features for the magazine and blogging for both Frontiers and my own personal blog, LGBT POV.
I would not be able to pay the rent if I only blogged at LGBT POV. I have Google AdSense – but frankly, the ads are whatever Google sends down the pike – including ads for Rand Paul’s tax plan. I have two friends who volunteer to help me and we’ve blocked some of the more atrocious ads. But for the most part, the ads only bring in “pennies.†Like other bloggers, I have seriously considered crashing LGBT POV because I am so frustrated at not having the time to do the kinds of pieces I want to do – which is why I started the blog – while also covering news and writing for my main job and blogging there, as well.  Let’s just say I carry a packet of Low Dose Aspirin wherever I go.
But I feel as if we’re at the beginning of another turning point. Look at the culture – people love Ellen, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Lynch, Glee and Modern Family. It’s as if the screwed up political world is emblematic of the farthest (let’s hope) the Farthest Right can go and people are getting fed up with hate. So whether we’re campy Freedom of Expression sexual outlaws or transgender dancers or the neighbors with a kid next door, we’re becoming more and more part of the culture and that gay “niche†advertising will be as unceremonious as having a woman doing a voice over or an African American in a TV ad. And that may mean that we see more mainstream advertising on LGBT blogs or LGBT blogs being smaller and self-financed or absorbed into something bigger or big ventures adding something LGBT as Huffington Post just did with Gay Voices which is way more cost-effective than the St. Martins Book experiment.
Either way, nothing will extinguish the LGBT imprint.
