Washington Blade
The Washington Blade is an LGBTQ newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area. The Blade is the oldest LGBTQ newspaper in the United States and third largest by circulation, behind the Philadelphia Gay News and the Gay City News of New York City. The Blade is often referred to as America's gay newspaper of record because it chronicled LGBTQ news locally, nationally, and internationally. The New York Times said the Blade is considered "one of the most influential publications written for a gay audience."
The paper was originally launched as an independent publication in October 1969 with a focus on bringing the community together. In 2001, the Blade was purchased by Window Media LLC, a group of gay-oriented newspapers circulated throughout the United States with a staff composed of professional journalists, becoming a leading source of news for the readers both in Washington and around the nation. The paper publishes weekly on Fridays and celebrated its 50th anniversary in October 2019.
In November 2009, the Blade and several related publications, including the Southern Voice, were shut down after Window Media announced it was closing business. After Blade staff members were told they no longer had jobs, plans were made for a new gay publication entitled DC Agenda, since the trademark for Washington Blade was still held by the now-defunct Window Media.
It was announced on April 27, 2010, that the DC Agenda would rename itself to the Washington Blade. The ownership group of the Agenda consisted of many former staff members of the Blade, who purchased the trademark and paper archives out of bankruptcy court. The first issue of the newly independent Blade debuted on April 30, 2010.
History
Origins to 1973
The Washington Blade, originally called The Gay Blade, published its first issue on October 5, 1969. Taking its roots from the Mattachine Society of Washington's newsletter in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Blade was conceived as a way to fill in a perceived gap in the organization of social communications within the gay community of Washington, D.C. It was created by Nancy Tucker and Lilli Vincenz. The Blade was originally published as a single page and distributed hand-to-hand in a variety of gay bars throughout the city. Afraid of a backlash over the publication, many of the initial authors of writings in the Blade used pen names during the early years of publishing.The initial publications were entirely created by volunteers from the community with two editors, Nancy Tucker and Bart Wenger, at the helm. Wenger stated the initial goals of the publication were to "...engender a sense of community" and that it was "very important for gays to become acquainted with one another." Published monthly from 1969 to 1973, the newspaper evolved from its original size and shape of a single letter sized paper sheet. In June 1972, the Gay Blade published its first multi-page edition which consisted of four pages and in April 1973, the paper expanded to eight pages and was printed on legal sized paper sheets, stapled in the middle and folded. As the looks of the paper evolved, so did the news coverage. The Gay Blade began to focus less on being a newsletter used to organize the community and more of a newspaper for the community.
Image:Washblade collage.jpg|thumb|Collage of historical covers of the Washington Blade showing the evolution of the size, format, and publication name from its early years to the present.
1974 to 1982
In July 1974, the first newsprint edition was published and signaled an evolution in the history of the Gay Blade. A fifth anniversary edition of the paper was not published in October 1974 because of a lack of revenue and interest, marking the only time the paper failed to publish an edition in its history. The new focus on being a newspaper allowed the publication's circulation to grow in 1974 and 1975 from five hundred copies distributed at less than a dozen sites to over 4,000 copies available at thirty-five locations throughout the city. The June 1975 edition of the Blade dropped the word 'Gay' from the title of the publication after it was discovered that a newspaper in New York City held the rights to the name Gay Blade. The new name of the publication was now The Blade. It continued to be published on newsprint paper and had no additional format changes until near the end of the decade. Incorporating as a non-profit corporation under the title of "Blade Communications, Inc." in November 1975, the paper continued its growth.Don Michaels, an important voice on the pages of the publication, was named the editor of the paper in January 1978. Michaels began strict enforcement of a policy that prohibited pen names from being used in bylines. By November 1978, the Blade was regularly featuring color printing on its pages and beginning in 1979, the Blade changed into a bi-weekly publication. Starting in October 1980, the name of the publication changed to The Washington Blade and the corporation re-incorporated as a for-profit, employee-owned business. In July 1981, the Blade ran a front-page story entitled "Rare, Fatal Pneumonia Hits Gay Men," making the paper one of the first gay newspapers in the country to write about the disease that has come to be known as AIDS. In November 1981, Don Michaels got promoted to the position of publisher, a position he would hold for over two decades.
1983 to 2000
The Blade started publishing weekly in January 1983 and coverage shifted to the AIDS crisis and news about this newly emerging disease. The ever-breaking news caused the paper to remain in a heightened state of coverage and nearly exhausted the papers resources with members of the community having to step in to support the work of the Blade. The reporting of the AIDS crisis from this timeframe allowed the newspaper to come of age to the mature and professionally driven publication seen today. In June 1988, the editors of the paper used a computer to layout the paper for the first time.The 1990s saw increases in readership and circulation of the Washington Blade. In April 1993, during the 1993 Gay March on Washington, the paper published its largest edition to date consisting of 216 pages. The paper expanded into new markets and mediums with the 1995 launch of the online version of the Blade, followed two years later with the launching of a sister publication in New York, called the New York Blade. In the later part of the century, coverage was expanded to include local and national news, as well as international news of interest to the LGBTQ community. Some authors implemented the use of humor in addressing potentially sensitive subjects, such as N. Leigh Dunlap in her long-running comic strip Morgan Calabrese.
2001 to 2024
On May 25, 2001, the print edition announced the sale of the Washington Blade to Window Media, LLC, a group of gay publications. With the new ownership came several changes to standardize the paper with other Window Media publications, such as the return of editorials to the publication after being missing for several decades. Shortly after the sale of the paper, staff at the Blade sought a vote to unionize with the help of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. The Guild and the staff of the Blade brought a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board and deliberated for a few weeks over this issue resulting in a ten to eight vote against unionization on July 20, 2001.Beginning in 2005, the Washington Blade also ran a free news clipping service called the BladeWire. This service collected news stories of interest to the LGBTQ community from a variety of local, state, regional, national, and selected international media sources. The service was generated by the Blades editors and was published on the internet. A feature of the BladeWire also allowed it to be syndicated onto other websites using JavaScript.
During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Senator John McCain's decision to participate in a written interview with the Blade marked the first time a Republican presidential nominee agreed to be interviewed by a gay publication.
On November 16, 2009, the paper was abruptly shut down because of the financial status of its parent company, Window Media, and its majority shareholder, Avalon Equity Partners. Employees at the Blade were aware of Window Media's financial troubles, but the timing and total closure of the publication came as a shock to the entire staff. Kevin Naff, editor of the Blade, said employees "found out when two of the corporate officers were waiting for us when we got to work this morning". Since the Blade had been a profitable newspaper, and because the debt-ridden Window Media was no longer draining the publication's finances, the same day the Blade shut down, Naff told the Washington City Paper he and the remaining staffers "We're all together. Our first meeting for our new venture is tomorrow morning." Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said the Blade had been a "weekly must-read", and pledged support for a new publication to serve Washington's LGBT community.
On November 20, 2009, a new venture, supported entirely by volunteering staff, launched with its first issue. Called DC Agenda, no relation to the non-profit organization of the same name, the new venture released the same week as the closing of the Blade. From the placeholder website SaveTheBlade.com:
Issues were handed out at Washington, D.C., Metro train stations, and an online copy was available at www.washingtonblade.com.
On February 25, 2010, DC Agenda acquired the assets of the Washington Blade from the US Bankruptcy Court. Included were the archives, name, trademarks, website, and fixtures from the Washington Blade offices. About a month later on April 26, 2010, the DC Agenda publisher announced that the Washington Blade name would return to the masthead of the paper with the DC Agenda becoming the name of the arts and entertainment section.
On March 24, 2017, the paper launched a version in Los Angeles, called the Los Angeles Blade.
On September 12, 2024, the Washington Blade became the first LGBTQ newspaper to be given an exclusive interview with a sitting U.S. president. Reporter Christopher Kane sat down with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office and discussed a wide range of topics.