DECEMBER 2009 [Vol. 11, No. 9]
A Publication of Rivendell Media

Celebrating 10 years of serving our community of journalists

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Feature: The Maine event: Defeat of marriage equality in Maine reminded LGBT journalists of similar California loss a year earlier
Sidebar: Maine battle ensnares gay blogger in tale of alleged terrorism threats
In The News: Former Window Media staffers launching new publications; Once on chopping block, Kansas’ Liberty Press will continue; Windy City Media publisher now film producer of lesbian-themed “Hannah Free”
Letters to the Editor: Want to survive? Don’t spend what you don’t have; Correcting Gay Chicago Magazine’s name
Transitions and Milestones
Bulletin Board
Staff
Contributors to This Issue
Contact Us

PORTLAND, Me. – Marriage equality suffered two big setbacks within a month’s time as the New York state Senate turned down a same-sex marriage bill on Dec. 2 and Maine voters, in a statewide referendum on Nov. 3, repealed – by a margin of 30,000 votes – a marriage equality law that legislators had enacted and Gov. John Baldacci had signed into law.

And LGBT media were on the front lines of coverage.

Both outcomes “are stinging losses, no doubt about it,” said veteran journalist Lisa Keen. Through her Keen News Service, she kept a close eye on Maine, providing preview stories and election-night reports to the Advocate, as well as several regional LGBT publications.

Veteran journalist and blogger Rex Wockner was also present at the Portland Holiday Inn on election night, reporting on results for various LGBT media outlets.

In spite of the setbacks, Keen said, “I think most people would say we are still in the plus column and have come a tremendous distance in the states … and by the polls showing a real growth for marriage equality – not a majority that support [it], but marriage equality’s moving in that direction and has been moving in that way since 2004.”

Nevertheless, most gay and non-gay political observers believe that marriage momentum has definitely shifted away from marriage equality. The recent anti-gay shift began with the loss in Maine, albeit by 30,000 votes. New York’s thumbs-down vote of 24-38 only solidified that drift.

New York’s Gay City News provided extensive coverage on developments in Albany, the state capital. 'I work a lot of sources, and reported everything I could without betraying sources,' said editor in chief Paul Schindler. 'The math in New York doesn't wholly make sense to me. Many, many people tell me 29 Democratic votes were needed to convince the GOP leadership to let its people vote their conscience. My analysis piece calls into question whether those votes could conceivably have been thought to be there,” given openly gay state Sen. Tom Duane's statement that neither Sens. Carl Krueger nor Darrell Aubertine, who voted no, ever said they would vote yes.

Back in September, alarm bells concerning Maine’s ballot question sounded for Cynthia Laird, editor of San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter. In California, painful memories still linger regarding Proposition 8’s shocking rollback of same-sex marriage rights in November 2008 after the state’s Supreme Court made it legal in the summer of 2008.

“I wrote at least one editorial specifically urging [Maine’s] No on 1 campaign to be more aggressive in its TV ads, because the ones I saw [online] were not strong enough, in my opinion,” Laird said in e-mail to Press Pass Q.

A number of LGBT journalists and bloggers noted that Maine’s Yes on 1 campaign essentially ran a carbon copy of California’s Yes on 8. As in California, anti-gay forces in the Pine Tree State raised the specter of homosexuality and same-sex marriage being taught in public schools. TV ads hammered away at the point, even though the state’s attorney general refuted the fear tactics as baseless.

“I felt that No on 1 didn’t hit back hard enough, especially with the ‘kids and schools’ issue,” said Laird. “I believe that issue – straight parents’ squeamishness around classroom curriculum – was a big reason Question 1 passed.”

In an Oct. 1 editorial headlined “Maine campaign needs to get tough,” Laird wrote as much: “We understand the No on 1 campaign’s desire to take the high road, to feature softer ads with real Maine families. It’s a good strategy.” Still, she went on to say, “When countering the onslaught of Yes on 1 ads, the messages must be tougher and confront the opposition’s message head on. That seems to be missing.”

Another California-based lesbian journalist, Frontiers In LA news editor Karen Ocamb, also closely followed Maine’s Question 1 as well as a domestic partner ballot measure in Washington state [where gay forces were victorious]. At the same time, she juggled reporter and blogger duties that included writing hard news and analysis, “mostly regular small updates, with an occasional special report analyzing the situation.”

Additionally, for informational purposes, Ocamb signed onto a No on 1 listserv, similar to one created by the No on Prop 8 campaign in California. That source enabled her to report news about Maine’s referendum campaign in “a timely and thorough manner,” Ocamb said, primarily relying on her own blog, launched Sept.30, called Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Point of View, or LGBT POV [www.lgbtpov.com].

Sure enough, Ocamb’s blog was both timely and expansive. She posted, for example, the latest poll findings and reported on the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage [NOM] – its connections to and questionable funding of YES on 1/Stand for Marriage Maine, the state's primary anti-gay coalition established to roll back marriage equality.

An important sidebar to the Maine story were reports of allegations of NOM’s money laundering, charges raised before Maine’s elections and ethics commission. At an Oct. 1 public hearing in the state capital of Augusta, commissioners by a 3-2 vote agreed to investigate the allegations raised by Fred Karger, a Laguna Beach, Calif.-based gay activist and founder of Californians Against Hate [www.californiansagainsthate.org], a story Keen News Service carried.

In yet another story, Ocamb wrote an exposé about the Sacramento, Calif.-based firm of Schubert Flint Public Affairs [www.schubertpa.com]. Her reporting revealed how the two-man team of Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint exported its highly successful Proposition 8 strategy – in effect a copy-cat strategy – to Maine. There, the team served as key campaign managers.

Raw material for Ocamb’s piece derived mainly from a recorded video of Schubert’s and Flint’s discussion of the Yes on 8 campaign’s successful strategy during a “case study” presentation for the American Association of Political Consultants. Once the video was posted on YouTube, she ran with the story. Left-leaning sites The Huffington Post and Daily Kos, among others, reposted the piece.

“It was a story best suited for a blog because I could link to the video,” Ocamb said.

For LGBT Americans, particularly those in California, “watching the Maine campaign felt like we were reliving the Prop 8 campaign, only with some of the mistakes seemingly ironed out,” said Ocamb. “Because the Maine referendum campaign was being touted as an almost perfectly run campaign, many Californians were expecting vicarious retribution for the passage of Prop 8.”

For that reason, Ocamb said, “The loss felt like the Prop 8 loss all over again – compounded by the fact that the election fell one day before the one-year anniversary of Prop 8.”

Still, with her blog up and running, Ocamb said, LGBT POV “gave people a place to share their grief, anger and opinions about what happened. For several weeks, the grief over No on 1 fueled the grassroots movement to repeal Prop 8 in 2010.”

All told, were there any lessons learned from the bitter defeat in Maine? Yes, according to Keen. “We can’t rely on the best campaign or the smartest campaign,” she said. “It’s still required that gay people in their own community talk to people” about marriage equality. “That’s what we still have to do.”

A conservative activist called federal investigators last month to investigate a prominent blogger who he claims allowed one of his readers to make terrorist threats.

Matt Barber, president of the Florida-based Liberty Fund, called the FBI in early November to claim prominent gay blogger Joe Jervis [of Joe.My.God fame] had allowed one of his readers to make terrorist threats against Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality [AFTAH].

Jervis criticized LaBarbera’s opposition to anti-marriage activists’ decision to endorse domestic partnerships for same-sex couples in Maine in advertisements that aired throughout the state ahead of its referendum that overturned a law that had allowed gays and lesbians to marry. One Joe.My.God reader suggested LaBarbera and others’ anti-marriage rhetoric might incite violence against them.

And another commented further: “You say this like it’s a bad thing? Maybe a bit of well organized terrorism is just what we need, er, I mean ‘civil disobedience.’”

LaBarbera later evoked the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 and wounded more than two dozen others on Nov. 4 when he discussed the controversy to the conservative website World Net Daily.

“A homosexual blogger passed off as a joke a suggestion by a contributor to his website that there might be church bombings because of Christians’ refusal to support the homosexual lifestyle,” he wrote. “But several individuals named in the column are taking the threat seriously. That is what Fort Hood teaches us.”

Jervis did not immediately respond to Press Pass Q’s request for comment, but he downplayed the row in an e-mail he sent to the Advocate.com.

“Even a casual reading of the comments in question will show that no direct threats of ‘terrorism’ were made towards anyone,” he wrote.

Jervis is the not the first blogger about whom conservative activists have complained to authorities.

LaBarbera called the FBI in early 2007 to report comments someone posted to Pam’s House Blend. Pam Spaulding [the Pam of Pam’s House Blend] told Press Pass Q that LaBarbera even launched a campaign to get her fired from her job at Duke University.

For his part, Jervis stressed on Joe.My.God that he feels the two men launched what he describes as “this campaign” based on his decision to urge his readers to attend one of their fundraisers, to review LaBarbera’s “book of reprinted columns” on Amazon.com and deflect attention from what he described as LaBarbera’s falling out with Stand for Maine in the days leading up to the marriage referendum.

“This campaign against [Joe.My.God] is an attempt by LaBarbera to gain ‘victim cred’ among the Christian right after they shunned and denounced him during the final days of Maine’s Yes On 1 drive,” Jervis blogged.

— Michael K. Lavers

In the month since Windows Media, LLC, shuttered its stable of publications - including the Washington Blade and Atlanta-based Southern Voice – LGBT reporters, editors and publishers have demonstrated remarkable resiliency. Staffers at the now-defunct Washington Blade, for example, are up and running with a new weekly named D.C. Agenda [www.dcagenda.com].

The first print issue was eight pages, said editor Kevin Naff. Subsequent issues were 20 and then 40 pages. “We are growing in the right direction.” Better yet, the staff is still hanging in there, with temporarily donated office space.

“Over the next three months,” Naff said, “we are to be incorporated as an employee-owned entity.” Another goal, he said, “Is to hire on a full-time basis as many people as we can.”

Previous Southern Voicers are also revved up in reconstruction mode. Former editor Laura Douglas-Brown and Voice founder Chris Cash have vowed to replace the defunct weekly newspaper with a new one, named GA Voice.

To that end, a standing-room only crowd turned out on Dec. 3 offering “lots of excellent ideas, great feedback and plenty of affirmation for a new LGBT news outlet for Atlanta,” wrote Douglas-Brown on the www.savesovo.com website, established right after the Voice’s shutdown in order to communicate with the local LGBT community.

GA Voice will be a “community-owned, community-led” news outlet, Douglas-Brown said. That means asking for investors. Already, the Lloyd E. Russell Foundation announced a $12,000 matching grant towards the effort, while OUT & Equal pledged $500. Douglas-Brown and her colleagues envision a website updated weekly, likely several times daily, along with a companion print publication offering more in-depth stories.

Meanwhile, New York City-based Gay City News reported on Nov.18 that Cash, who owned the paper from 1988 until she sold it to Window in 1996, reached out to lawyers from the Small Business Association in early 2009, expressing an interest in buying back the paper. “Cash was never given the opportunity to show that she was a qualified buyer,' GCN reported.

As Cash told GCN for the story, “It may very well be that I couldn’t afford to buy my old newspaper back.” Still, “I did not want to see [Southern Voice] die.”

Avalon Equity, which had borrowed $39 million from the SBA since 2000, was the majority stockholder of Window Media. When the levels of private capital fell below levels required by its SBA contract in 2008, the federal agency placed Avalon in receivership. Avalon has since declared bankruptcy.

GCN also reported that an October report filed in federal court “suggests that the SBA had more interested buyers than just these two,” referring to Cash and Nicholas F. Benton, the owner of a weekly Falls Church, Va., paper, located outside Washington, D.C.. In fact, the SBA had told Benton six weeks before its shutdown that “he was the winning bidder to buy the Blade,” GCN reported.

Blade editor Naff noted, “We were aware of his offer. Blade employees had an offer in as well. There were two offers [for the Blade] that we know of.”

Apparently, the Blade did not bleed red ink. “The Blade operated in the black,” Naff said. “We were a profitable business but were dragged down, tethered to this corporate entity that borrowed its way into oblivion.”

Just why the papers were shuttered when they had bidders willing to acquire them is one of any number of questions that linger.

In the Blade’s case, Naff said, he considers the shutdown “an attack on the community.” In fact, ultimately Window – not the SBA – made the decision to shutter the Blade, according to the federal agency’s press statements, which said that Window “is wholly responsible for any decision to sell or not to sell the newspaper properties it owns. … The decision to shut down the newspapers was made wholly by” Window, reported GCN.

“They had a choice,” said Naff, referring to Window co-presidents Steve Myers and Mike Kitchens. “They could have filed [for bankruptcy under] Chapter 11.” Also known as rehabilitation bankruptcy, Chapter 11 allows an entity to reorganize its debt and emerge as a healthy company.

Instead, they chose Chapter 7, often referred to as liquidation bankruptcy. “[Myers and Kitchen] owe our community an explanation,” said Naff. “Not only were we screwed over when our last paychecks were voided,” but also 'they were not able to fund our health insurance during the month of December.'

Another question remains: What happens to the Blade’s vast archives, two-dozen cabinets full of old photos and newspapers, which are currently located in the Blade’s former National Press Building offices. “Good question,” said Naff, who said D.C. Agenda “has its eye” on the archives. “As soon as [they] are ready for sale, we will submit a bid and once we get [them], we will donate [the material] to a local institution,” such as a nearby college or university or the Rainbow History Project.

Still, there is fear, said Naff. 'What happens if the National Press Building leases our old office, and someone hauls off those filing cabinets? We don't know what could happen.”

— Chuck Colbert

Once on chopping block, Kansas’ Liberty Press will continue

A Kansas newspaper continues to publish after its editor had warned she would have to close down for good.

Kristi Parker, editor of the Wichita, Kan.-based Liberty Press, had warned her readers and writers at the end of October that ongoing financial difficulties and a pending foreclosure on her home had forced her to cease publication after the paper’s November issue.

After Parker wrote her letter, she said she began to receive a steady stream of e-mails and letters from people across the state who offered her anything from stamps to their 401K money in order to keep Liberty Press publishing.

In the end, her father offered to pay her back mortgage. And a local HIV/AIDS service organization offered Parker an office from which she could work. She was unable to disclose the final details of the arrangement, but Parker said she remains grateful for the offers she received.

“It looks like to me everything is going to work out – amazing compared to what it looked like two months ago,” she said. “My mortgage is fixed, and I have new office space, which is wonderful.”

Founded in 1994, Liberty Press covers Lawrence, Topeka and Wichita. Parker distributes 5,000 copies each month to cities and towns across Kansas – including just six to the town of Liberal in the far southwest corner of the state.

“We really are everywhere, even out on the cattle farms,” Parker said.

She recalled a letter she received from a reader in Spearville, Kan., who was quick to applaud the way she has covered the Sunflower State for more than a decade.

“[He] wrote to say he’s very grateful we’re still around and looks forward to it every month,” Parker said. “It is what keeps him connected.”

Parker wrote her initial letter less than a month before the Washington Blade and other Window Media-affiliated LGBT publications went out of business. The Memphis Triangle Journal announced in early December it had folded. And both Genre and the New York Blade folded earlier in 2009.

In spite of the turmoil that continues to permeate LGBT media, Parker wrote in a subsequent letter to her readers that she remains pragmatic but optimistic about her publication’s future.

“I don’t even want to venture a guess as to what the future holds for the paper, but coast to coast, I don’t believe there is a finer, more cohesive community out there anywhere,” she said. “And I look forward to continuing to put good things out there.”

— Michael K. Lavers

Windy City Media publisher now film producer of lesbian-themed “Hannah Free”

What motivated a highly successful lesbian editor and publisher of one of the nation’s most widely respected LGBT media outlets to become a film producer?

For Tracy Baim of the Windy City Media Group, the reasons lay at the heart of a career in journalism.

“I’ve been at this for 25 years, writing stories about gay rights,” she told Press Pass Q. “I don’t necessarily know how those stories impacted anyone beyond being informational.”

And yet, Baim explained, “I have always been impacted by movies because in particular they change our community and our lives.” For one thing, she said, “You’re validated,” seeing real gay life on the screen. “Beyond that, [films] educate [non-gay] people about [the LGBT] community.”

Baim is the executive producer for the new movie “Hannah Free,” currently making its way around the country at film festivals and theatrical runs in major U.S. cities – most recently in New York, where it opened on Dec. 11 in Greenwich Village.

“Hannah Free” is, as Stephen Holden’s review in the New York Times put it, “a clanking, sudsy, tear-jerker about longtime lesbian lovers languishing in the same Michigan nursing home in the 1990s.”

For Baim, who is also the managing partner of Ripe Fruit Films, a company set up to raise funds for “Hannah Free,” the Times review represented a milestone. The national paper of record took the movie seriously enough to publish the review in print and online.

To be sure, “Hannah Free” has neither been produced nor marketed as a Hollywood blockbuster as its meager $200,000 budget attests.

“Hannah Free” is based on a play written by Chicago lesbian dramatist Claudia Allen, who is a co-producer of the film. And the film has the star power so often necessary to create a media buzz. Case in point is Emmy-award winning actress Sharon Gless who plays the leading role of Hannah. Gless starred in 'Queer as Folk' as P-FLAG mom Debbie Novotney, as well as Detective Christine Cagney in the 1980s television series “Cagney and Lacey.”

LGBT media have also published reviews of the film, and Bay Area Reporter provided news and arts coverage. After all, “Hannah Free” drew 1,600 people to the Castro Theatre during the movie’s run in San Francisco. Still, feature pieces that tap into Gless’ fame represent the vast majority of press coverage. Accordingly, national LGBT publications — the Advocate, Go! and Curve magazines have provided column ink featuring “Hannah Free” and Gless.

Baim said she loves her dual roles as publisher and now film producer. “It’s proven to me that like journalism and news, films can shape the dialogue and culture,” she said. “I am very grateful to see how people can be changed by movies,” in some cases, “significantly changed.”

— Chuck Colbert

I read with interest the latest Press Pass Q and I want to tell fellow publishers that the sky is not falling. Hold the presses on those Chicken Little bulletins. The world is not ending. Gay publishing and gay newspapers are not seeing Armageddon. Observing the great hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing by folks after the demise of The Blade et al., it would seem we are all on the streets with tin cups in competition with the Salvation Army guys, but damn it, it’s just not so [“Washington Blade no more: Window Media newspapers in D.C., Atlanta and Florida shut down,” November 2009].

I do wish there were a way for more folks to see that successful papers and publishers are out here, but you can’t sit on what the Brits call your jaxie – sounds way nicer than ass doesn’t it? – and expect profits to hop into your lap. Making it is still all about communicating with readers, making deals to get and keep ads coming and not spending money you do not have.

Large and small papers all seem to have the very same issue. I was blown away when I saw in the Washington Post that the Blade had 24 fulltime staff. 24!!! I work with just me, a few freelancers and a delivery crew. I also do a delivery route myself as I have from day one to see and be seen carrying papers by my customers. I’m here to tell you since that the Blade was weekly and came out 4 times as often as I do [though perhaps with fewer pages per issue as we average, 64] , they likely could have done it all with under 10 staff. I’m just shell-shocked that they had 24.

This is such a real inside look at how companies, gay and straight, run these days. And I wonder how often any of the failed papers’ posh – and dare I say “self-important” – editors or publishers were ever seen on a truck or delivering their own products with the grunts. It’s always sad to see a fellow paper go out, but in some cases the rewards are deserved and I can hardly think of a case where this is more so than the current one. Don’t folks watch budgets and work themselves anymore? Loans you cannot pay, business models that were fine in 1998 and never updated to reflect the harsh economy, even giving away freebies when you can’t make the monthly bills are all signs of a business in big, big trouble.

Reality seems to have set in too late for the Blade and their fellow publications, as well as many others, but it’s not too late for many of the rest of you to dust off your coats, gloves and boots, join your crew in the streets, look hard at budgets and cut what you don’t really, really need. And most of all, to quit spending money you do not have in the bank now.

I am proud that we have made it, but we have done it because we have no debt, I personally look at every expense in every city in the five states we serve – and cut out ones which don’t turn a profit – and most of all we do a lot of the work ourselves. What might have worked in the past won’t now and it’s time everyone woke up to that fact. Or as they said when a major East Coast afternoon newspaper went out some years back, “Dinosaurs don’t live here anymore.”

24 staff. Sigh.

Ted Fleischaker
Publisher
The Word
Indianapolis, Ind.

Correcting Gay Chicago Magazine’s name

We at Gay Chicago Magazine are proud to be involved in the Equality Forum GLBT History Month icons celebration – and were glad to see our cover story feature of Chicago's very own Suze Orman written up in Press Pass Q [“History month ‘icons’ pitched to LGBT media,” October 2009].

Unfortunately, you got our publication name wrong. While we do cover news, we're a magazine first. We hope your future coverage of our publication will reflect our correct name?

Craig Gernhardt
President
Gay Chicago Magazine
Chicago, Ill.

[What’s your opinion? We’d like to know. Send your letters to editor@PressPassQ.com. Letters should be kept to a maximum of 250 words and may be edited for length and clarity.]

CORRECTION

Due to a reporting error in last month’s issue of Press Pass Q, Matthew Breen was incorrectly identified as managing editor of the Advocate [“The Advocate fights off death-knell rumors”]. In the same article, Stephen Macias’ title was incorrectly reported. He is senior vice president of Regent Media. Press Pass Q regrets these errors and any confusion they may have caused.

[Editor’s note: Are there important changes going on at your publication? E-mail the information to editor@PressPassQ.com.]

THE ADVOCATE’s May 2009 “Porn Panic” cover has been chosen by Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 Magazine Covers of the Year. It was the only cover of an LGBT publication on Time’s list.

JON BARRETT has been named editorial director of the newly formed ADVOCATE GROUP. He will now oversee many HERE MEDIA properties, including THE ADVOCATE, ADVOCATE.COM, SHEWIRED.COM and PLANETOUT.COM.

DALLAS VOICE debuted its new look and logo in its Sept. 4, 2009, issue.

ANDREW MERSMANN, editor in chief of PASSPORT MAGAZINE, has a new book about global volunteer vacation opportunities called, “Frommer’s 500 Places Where You Can Make A Difference.” He is also blogging about volunteerism at www.ChangeByDoing.com.

NEXT, based in New York City, premiered its new, more compact look with its Sept. 18, 2009, issue.

ODYSSEY, based in Honolulu, HI, celebrated its 15th anniversary with its September 2009 issue.

OUT ON THE COAST, based in Roseland, Fla., has suspended publication, in part because of the withdrawal of a major advertiser.

OUTSMART, based in Houston, was named Best Local Magazine at the Houston Press Best of Houston Awards.

PAUL VARNELL, veteran syndicated columnist based in Chicago, was laid off by the CHICAGO FREE PRESS last month.

Q-NOTES, based in Charlotte, N.C., recently moved to new office space in the city’s Plaza-Midwood neighborhood.

IRA ROY SCHULTZ, publisher of STEREOTYPD magazine, based in Asheville, Ky., died on Nov. 15, 2009, of a heart attack. He was 52.

HANNAH CLAY WAREHAM is the newest reporter at Boston-based BAY WINDOWS. She replaces ETHAN JACOBS, who left to continue his studies at University of California, Berkeley.

ON THE WEB. At the Press Pass Q website - www.PressPassQ.com - you'll find back issues and subscription information. Also, at the Q Syndicate website - www.qsyndicate.com - you'll find up-to-date information on the 12 columns and features we distribute to gay and lesbian media: A Couple of Guys, Bitter Girl, Book Marks, Deep Inside Hollywood, Editorial Cartoons, Now Playing, Out of Town, The OutField, Political IQ, Q Puzzle, Q Scopes, and Sex Talk. For information about subscribing to Q Syndicate content, write to qsyndicate@pridesource.com or call toll-free 888-615-7003.

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Publisher: Todd Evans, todd@PressPassQ.com
Editor: Fred Kuhr, editor@PressPassQ.com
Associate Editor: Dave Brousseau, dave@QSyndicate.com
Contributing Writers: Derrik Chinn, Chuck Colbert, Tanya Gulliver, Liz Highleyman, Michael K. Lavers, Matthew Pilecki, David Webb

CHUCK COLBERT is a freelance journalist based in Cambridge, Mass. He is a longtime contributor to the National Catholic Reporter and covered the crisis of clerical sex-abuse in the Boston archdiocese. Previously a senior reporter and columnist for the former In Newsweekly, he is a contributor to Keen News Service and Boston Spirit Magazine. Also, he has written for major mainstream daily newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. He can be reached at crciiiund@aol.com.

FRED KUHR is an editor, reporter, performer and personal trainer based in Toronto. He has written for The Advocate, AdWeek, Toronto-based Xtra, and Boston Spirit Magazine. He has also served as editor of now-defunct publications In Newsweekly [based in Boston] and Out in the Mountains [based in Vermont]. He has served as a news analyst on the Fox News Channel and CBC Radio, as well as other media outlets. Fred blogs about politics and pop culture at the FredBlog at www.fred-blog.com and has been rated one of the top Twitterers of “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”

MICHAEL K. LAVERS is the National News Editor for EDGE Publications. His work has appeared in the Fire Island News, the Guide, the Village Voice and other LGBT and mainstream publications around the world. He has also provided commentaries on LGBT issues to the BBC, “The Brian Lehrer Show” on WNYC in New York, “La Razón” in Spain and other media outlets. He also blogs at Boy in Bushwick, which can be found at www.bushwickboy.blogspot.com.

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