Just recently I picked up Q-Life magazine, one of Milwaukee's LGBT monthly newspapers and what should I see but an editorial by the Editor in Chief about how she was stunned that the Milwaukee Visioning Project was negotiating to have a queer section in the Shepherd Express newspaper on a monthly basis. Can you believe it? Without ever contacting any other gay newspaper concerning their intentions. That to me is a slap in the face to our papers. It is as though they are saying "You Suck" we don't want to support you and we want to go with the mainstream Straight newspapers in order to cover our news.
These are people who are supposed to be leaders in our community. Many of them are but I wonder why they didn't first ask for public opinion concerning their intentions instead of going behind our backs. Pretty sneaky if you ask me.
Personally I prefer a queer newspaper for LGBT people, written by gay people. Not some mainstream straight newspaper writing about us. It is a fact that straights have stolen our favorite bars and even ruined one of our cherished events, Halloween. We should not allow then to steal our news too. I'm sorry but I can not support any organization, no matter how noble their intentions to sabotage our newspapers. We don't need more competition. What we need is for all of us to support our LGBT businesses. I don't like it and neither should you.
What we should do is let them know how we feel at the next meeting at the Gay Arts Center on December 21st at 9:00 am. Tell them its a rotten idea. I plan to.
Please leave a comment one way or another.
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1 comment:
gary--while i agree that this situtation should have been handled much better, with both publications contacted first with their reactions/imput. only common, good manners. but, i do not feel it is a "slap" in the face to the glbt publications or community. plus, the ACTUAL press runs and distribution sites of the 2 publications are very low. and hard to locate. and many copies are not picked up with too many copies left or not enough copies left and all copies picked up well before needed. no need for that if sites were properly monitored which they are not. the shepherd express can give our community a huge promotion with their 55,000 or so press run. their ad rates are high so might get little lgbt advertising unless lower rates are offerred. i, strongly, feel if the current lgbt publications were doing a great--even good job in presenting the news this would not be happening. plus, almost no photos are being run so our community is losing our history now in a big way. the shepherd glbt section, hopefully, will be a good step forward. for those reading this who do not know and for the record here, i once co-owned and published THE WISCONSIN LIGHT newspaper for eleven years. thank-you jerry johnson moviestuff@msn.com
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