Advocate Goes Inside Out
Andrew Sullivan passes along word that The Advocate “one of the oldest titles out there - will now become a 32-page insert in Out.” Which is apparently published by the same conglomerate.
Rather clearly, gay-oriented media are having the same troubles as other titles for the same reasons: Increased costs, loss of advertising revenues, and competition from the Internet chief among them.
One imagines, too, that the mainstreaming of homosexuality means that there’s simply less reason to subscribe to magazines about being gay. Not only are there plenty of gay-oriented blogs, ezines, forums, and the like but gay culture is part of the larger culture now. Maybe not so much in small town America but certainly in the big cities. And, more to the point, in mainstream magazines, movies, and television shows.
Ack! Your blog is positively awash in McDonnell for Governor ads!
Only in the most cursory, superficial ways. You mention, but pass over, the real problem with the gay press: conglomeration. Now that almost all gay publications have been consolidated and repackaged as lookalike, slick, advertising-choked glossies, it’s no wonder they can be replaced by similar hetero crap.
But people made money on the way to this mess, so we should all heave a sigh of relief.