Opinion :: Editorial
What does the death of the Washington Blade mean to Bay Windows readers?Wednesday Nov 18, 2009 Just as the Blade turned 40, it came face to face with the grim reaper. The cause of death, however, was not the Internet or an economic advertising drain -- it was corporate greed and mismanagement. The corporate parent, Window Media-HX-Avalon Equity (yes, it’s confusing), has been on a gay newspaper killing spree (IN Newsweekly, the New England Blade, the Southern Voice, the Houston Voice, the South Florida Blade, 411, HX New York, and HX Philadelphia). All because of the old saw: they placed corporate greed before community.
A quick history lesson would have told them that gay media was established in order to provide a voice to a minority and to forward the fight for equal rights. When our community is viewed as a marketing demographic rather than a movement, the result should not be surprising. The death of Window Media was self-inflicted.
We’ve known and worked with many of the staffers at the Window chain and found them each to be good journalists and committed to the greater good of LGBT civil rights. Their bosses, however, left a trail of unpaid staffers. And as much as we love a good old-fashioned newspaper war, the idea of a gay newspaper launching in a city with the sole goal of putting the established newspaper out of business is simply bad for our community.
Window Media was blind and deaf to the needs of the local communities they were supposed to be serving. They entered into cities acting like jack-booted thugs, bullying freelance writers, advertisers, and community organizations.
We witnessed it first hand here in New England with their acquisition of IN Newsweekly. Their mistakes are too numerous to mention but in a nutshell they succeeded in angering local non-profit organizations, replacing the local content in IN with stories from their Washington and New York papers, and pursuing national advertisers to the detriment of their local advertiser base.
Bay Windows survived that challenge because we view our publication, and her place within our community, very differently.
That’s how we did business then, now, and will continue to in the future. Sure, the economy is still pretty lousy right now, but we feel we’ve made it through the worst of this recession. And we actually see a bright future. So if anyone in our community is concerned about the future of Bay Windows, rest assured that we are fine, and we will not make the same mistakes that befell the Washington Blade.
Jeff Coakley and Sue O’Connell are co-publishers of Bay Windows. They can be reached at publishers@baywindows.com
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