LGBTQ+ · San Francisco
ON Magazine Connected LGBTQ Bay Area Life Beyond the Headlines
Published from San Jose, OutNow Newsmagazine—also known as ON Magazine—covered LGBTQ life across the San Francisco Bay Area while also reaching readers interested in culture, politics, housing and local events.
By KLGBT News Desk ·
Before social media became a central way to find community events and local news, OutNow Newsmagazine offered a broad view of LGBTQ life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also known as ON and ON Magazine, the monthly publication was based in San Jose and had been published since 1992.
Its audience included lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readers, but its coverage was not limited to explicitly LGBTQ subjects. Each issue took on a different editorial theme, including health, relationships, home improvement, weekend travel, Pride, sports, arts and entertainment, and business. That rotating approach positioned the magazine as both a community publication and a guide to everyday life in the region.
For San Francisco readers, the magazine’s significance lay in its regional perspective. Rather than focusing only on identity-based news, ON also covered subjects that affected the wider Bay Area: housing, local politics, theater, cultural events and business. The publication featured conversations with politicians, business executives and actors, bringing mainstream civic and cultural figures into a publication created for an LGBTQ audience.
ON’s event listings were similarly broad. The magazine estimated that roughly two-thirds of the events it listed were not specifically LGBTQ-focused, making the calendar useful to readers looking for activities throughout the region. That approach also helped the publication reach people outside its core audience. Online reader surveys conducted by the magazine found that 23 percent of respondents identified as heterosexual.
The result was a publication that treated LGBTQ readers as a community with varied interests rather than as an audience defined only by political or civil-rights coverage. A reader might turn to one issue for health information, another for home projects or travel ideas, and another for arts coverage or Pride planning. The magazine’s reporting also reflected the overlap between LGBTQ life and the broader civic life of the Bay Area.
ON offered an electronic edition through its website and provided daily news updates online. Its combination of print features, event information and web content reflected an effort to serve readers across the region, including those in San Francisco, while maintaining a base in Silicon Valley.
For local LGBTQ media history, OutNow is notable as an example of a publication that expanded the meaning of community coverage. Its pages connected identity, culture, commerce and everyday Bay Area living—an editorial mix that could speak to LGBTQ readers while remaining accessible to people beyond the community.
Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “ON Magazine” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ON_Magazine 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://books.google.com/books?id=RuzZAAAAMAAJ - https://books.google.com/books?id=54rgAAAAMAAJ - https://books.google.com/books?id=F_jZAAAAMAAJ - https://books.google.com/books?ei=lqnGULj1NOW7igLg8oHoCw - https://books.google.com/books?id=5p6EaaUyZpkC - https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=%22ON+Magazine%22&acc=on&wc=on Image rights Photograph description: San Francisco Creator: Mobilus In Mobili. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASan_Francisco_(3163041783).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.