The New York Blade’s Short Run in LGBTQ Journalism

For a little more than a decade, The New York Blade served as a free weekly newspaper for New York City’s LGBTQ community. Established in 1997 as a local edition of the Washington Blade, the publication covered lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues alongside entertainment, classified advertising, and free personals for men and women.

Its arrival was not without controversy. LGBTQ rights advocates questioned indications that News Communications would hold half of the paper, raising concerns about ownership by a company outside the community. Critics also objected to the Blade’s stated preference for objective reporting rather than advocacy. The newspaper did not include an editorial page, a choice that further distinguished it from publications that used their platforms to campaign directly for LGBTQ rights.

Despite those criticisms, the Blade became part of the city’s LGBTQ media landscape. Its pages included Alison Bechdel’s comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” connecting the newspaper to a widely recognized strand of lesbian cultural life. The publication also carried practical community information. When the New York City Police Department launched a campaign to recruit LGBTQ police officers, the department placed advertisements in the newspaper.

The paper’s ownership changed during its relatively brief history. In 2001, Window Media, LLC acquired The New York Blade and the Washington Blade. Four years later, both newspapers were sold to HX Media. Kat Long became editor-in-chief in February 2009, succeeding Trenton Straube.

Long’s tenure came near the end of the New York edition’s run. The newspaper stopped publishing in July 2009, closing a chapter in New York City’s LGBTQ press history.

The Blade’s story reflects several tensions that have shaped LGBTQ journalism: whether a community newspaper should prioritize advocacy or conventional reporting, how ownership affects editorial identity, and how publications balance news with the everyday services and cultural coverage readers expect. Its mix of reporting, entertainment, advertisements, personals, and comics offered more than a single viewpoint on LGBTQ life in New York. It also documented how institutions, businesses, and readers used a specialized publication to reach the city’s LGBTQ communities.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “The New York Blade” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Blade The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.ebscohost.com/titleLists/qth-coverage.htm - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/nyregion/02gay.html - https://books.google.com/books?id=uFdxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86 - https://thenewyorkblade.com/ - https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0294-8052 - https://www.proquest.com/docview/316978100 Image rights Photograph description: photo by Linda Fletcher Creator: Adjoajo. License: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Brownstone_in_Harlem.jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.