Dominic Holden’s Seattle Journalism Career Spanned LGBTQ Reporting, Cannabis Policy and Labor Organizing

Dominic Holden’s career has connected several influential parts of Seattle’s civic and media life: LGBTQ journalism, alternative newspapers, cannabis policy and newsroom labor organizing.

Holden served as an editor at The Stranger, Seattle’s long-running alternative weekly, for six years. He later became director of Seattle Hempfest, the city’s large cannabis-focused public event. His work also placed him in the documentary record surrounding Washington’s cannabis debate: Holden appeared in the 2013 film Evergreen: The Road to Legalization.

His journalism received national recognition. The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association named Holden its 2016 Journalist of the Year. The following year, The Advocate included him on its list of 50 influential LGBTQ people in the United States.

From 2015 through June 2020, Holden wrote for BuzzFeed News. During that period, he was also among the leaders of an effort to unionize BuzzFeed employees, according to a 2019 report in The New York Times. The organizing effort placed a prominent LGBTQ journalist within a broader national conversation about workplace power, employment conditions and the role of unions in digital media. The available record does not establish the effort’s final outcome.

Holden’s Seattle connection is also personal. His father, Ronald Holden, is a Seattle food writer who worked at KING-TV and served as executive editor of Seattle Weekly, the city’s other major alternative weekly. That family link places Dominic Holden within a Seattle media tradition shaped by independent publications as well as broadcast journalism.

Taken together, Holden’s professional history reflects the overlapping communities that have helped define Seattle’s public culture. He worked in alternative newsrooms, contributed to national digital journalism, participated in cannabis-policy advocacy through Hempfest and took part in a union-organizing campaign at a major media company. His awards further mark him as a notable figure in LGBTQ journalism during the 2010s.

For Seattle readers, Holden’s biography offers a snapshot of how local media careers can move between city-based publications and national platforms. It also shows how LGBTQ journalists have contributed not only to coverage of identity and politics, but to debates about labor, public policy and institutional change.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Dominic Holden” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Holden 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.thestranger.com/slog/2016/09/14/24559317/former-stranger-writer-dominic-holden-wins-national-journalism-award - https://www.advocate.com/people/2017/8/16/50-most-influential-lgbts-media - https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/09/23/jackson-and-holden-prominent-seattle-writers-strike-out-on-their-own/ - https://www.buzzfeed.com/archive/2015/2/9 - https://blog.seattlepi.com/marijuana/2013/06/04/evergreen-the-story-of-legalizing-pot-in-washington/ - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/business/buzzfeed-news-union-layoffs.html Image rights Photograph description: Dominic Holden, departing Stranger editor and reporter being "roasted" at the Re-Bar, Seattle, Washington, November 1, 2014. Roasters included prominent city and county officials, past and present Stranger staff, and people from the Seattle theater community. Creator: Joe Mabel. License: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADominic_Holden_02_(cropped).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.