“Boyfriend of 25 Years”

I enjoyed Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz’s profile of New York magazine’s editor Adam Moss, but was caught off guard by this paragraph:

There was no chance he would pass up the opportunity. Growing up on Long Island and reading his parents’ subscription to New York magazine, “it was a romantic idea of mine that one day I might have a chance to edit it,” Moss says. He walks or bikes to work from his apartment in the West Village, where he lives with his boyfriend of 25 years, a bookstore owner.

A boyfriend of 25 years. I wasn’t convinced it was wrong or inappropriate, but I couldn’t imagine Sam Shepard being described as Jessica Lange’s “boyfriend of 26 years.” It just seemed awkward or imperfect.

Apparently, Kurtz and Moss felt the same way. Here’s what Kurtz said in his weekly chat at WaPo when quizzed about the story.

Washington, D.C.: Towards the end of today’s profile of Adam Moss, you referred to Mr. Moss’ “boyfriend of 25 years.” Was the term “boyfriend” one used by Mr. Moss, or is it your term”? Frankly, the term seems to demean a long-term relationship. And coming from a writer who has publicly criticized his newspaper as too supportive of gay marriage rights, I am skeptical about its use in the profile.

Howard Kurtz: I actually talked to Adam about that. He said boyfriend or partner was find, that he himself didn’t know what term to use.

These seems like a proper response.

More Coverage of Death of Christine Daniels/Mike Penner

Following up on the great post by Ina Fried on the death of sportswriter Christine Daniels/Mike Penner, some more links worth checking out

- National  Public Radio’s On the Media did a lengthy segment with LA Times sports editor Mike James. James was a longtime friend of Daniels/Penner and talks about what he’ll miss the most about the Penner’s (and Daniels’) work.  I also enjoyed hearing Christine Daniels’ voice, from a 2007 interview, talking about her transition and feeling like she was finally in First Class, instead of Coach, now that she was in her new body.

- the Bay Area Reporter’s Roger Brigham interviews Mara Keisling, executive director of National Center for Transgender Equality, about her thoughts about Daniels, and Brigham talks about his own remembrances of Penner as a sportswriter.

- two stories from media website Mediaite. One is the initial coverage by Rachel Sklar and another by me on how the death was covered in the LGBT and alternative press and blogosphere.

Where Have All the Ribbons Gone?

Next Magazine is the reigning (and only) gay nightlife weekly guide to New York City.

Mostly a mix of party listings, theater and dining recommendations with a dose of escort advertising, to its credit the publication often includes substantive feature articles.

The cover story of the November 27 issue in advance of World AIDS Day is a case in point. “Where Have All the Ribbons Gone?” spotlights three HIV-positive gay men.

On the cover is Mark Nelson, a well-known party promoter; also included are Luna Legacy, a community health specialist at GMHC and Mike Cavanaugh, founder of GayLifeNYC.org.

The tone of the five-page article is set by the deck: “Almost 30 years after it changed the face of our community, have we forgotten about AIDS?”

Here’s an excerpt:

“To live with AIDS in 2009 is scary for a whole different reason: the feeling that, to the gay community, AIDS is no longer their issue. In 2007, The New York Department of Health released a shocking statement: HIV rates in New York City had actually increased 33% among men under 30 since 2001. ‘My belief is that [new people contracting the virus] have never seen the destruction of AIDS,’ explains Nelson. ‘They think by going on the Internet and saying they will only have sex with [drug- and disease-free] guys, they can practice unsafe habits.’”

Another excerpt that grabbed me:

“Perhaps what has also distanced the gay community from HIV/AIDS over the last decade or more is that the focus has shifted. ‘The face of AIDS is no longer the gay man,’ Mark Nelson points out. ‘It is an African child, which makes some feel the disease is not here.’ As well, the largest increases in New York have not been amongst the photogenic Chelsea boys but instead the ethnic minorities of the outer boroughs, a fact that allows some in the community to dissociate themselves from the disease and focus their energy on more attractive social issues.”

Kudos to Next Magazine for taking on HIV/AIDS and to Mark Nelson, Luna Legacy and Mike Cavanaugh for putting a face to the disease for the LGBT community.

I also hope that Next Magazine (as well as the rest of the LGBT media and mainstream media) will include such coverage outside of World AIDS Day.

Wockner Chats Up Joe Jervis

Rex Wockner continues his interesting one-on-one interviews with famous citizen journalists/bloggers by chatting up Joe Jervis, the man behind JoeMyGod.  He interviewed Towleroad’s Andy Towle in November.

Joe discusses how he came up with the name of his blog, what his workday is like, and how his blogging differs from others, including Towle’s. This part about Joe’s “accidental clout” was especially interesting.

Rex: So, given that you sort of have become a gay public figure and a gay media outlet and a gay voice with clout, how do you deal with people who try to influence what you do or talk you into something that you don’t want to do?

Joe: I am very aware of being managed. And I’m aware when obviously lots of LGBT organizations and other groups want to get their message out and how they’ll try to massage me into being sympathetic either to their point of view or to feeling obligated to parrot their press release or their event or their rally or whatever, and I try to keep them at arm’s length, you know, both emotionally and not to overstep my position journalistically. There are a few groups that are rather notorious for trying to manage bloggers, to make sure that the message they want is the one that we put out. And that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of good people doing good work and their message isn’t the right message. It usually is. But I’m also very leery of becoming their sock-puppet, and you learn by error. A few years ago, you might be flattered that someone from some major progressive or LGBT group might want to get you on the phone and ask for your opinion, and then a little bit wiser and later you realize that they were sweet-talking you into basically regurgitating to your readers exactly what they want them to read and believe. And so with bitter experience you start treating those sort of conversations with a jaundiced eye.

PPQ Interviews Chibbaro

Press Pass Q (PPQ), the LGBT media newsletter, interviews the “Helen Thomas of the gay press” as PPQ describes him, former Washington Blade reporter Lou Chibbaro.

Here’s an excerpt:

PPQ: What have been the biggest changes that you have seen in the development, maturing and expansion of LGBT media?

Chibbaro: I believe the two biggest changes that have had a profound effect in developing and expanding the reach of the LGBT media have been the steady increase in advertising revenue from non-gay businesses beginning in the mid 1970s through the 1990s, and the advent of the Internet from the 1990s to the present.

For the Blade, increased ad revenue from many prominent local and some national advertisers enabled it to expand its staff and hire qualified professional reporters and editors who helped make the Blade a highly respected news organization within the LGBT community and the Washington metropolitan area.

The decision by businesses to embrace many LGBT publications as a site for advertising reflected the growing acceptance of gay people and the LGBT community in American society. In recent years, the Blade, like other mainstream print media, has encountered a drop in ad revenue due to evolving changes in the news business brought out largely by the Internet. Like all other media outlets, the LGBT media must now grapple with this shift in readership from print to online media.

As with many former Blade staffers, Chibbaro can now be found at the DC Agenda.

Black, White or Gay?

A terrific piece in the Los Angeles Times about the mayoral race in Atlanta, which pits a white woman–Mary Norwood–against an African American man–Kasim Reed.  While the run-off was expected to come down to a question of race and voter-turnout, the new dynamic is the gay vote.

The support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community has been a coveted political prize for some time in Atlanta, a bastion of live-and-let-live progressivism in the heart of the more censorious Bible Belt.

But the wooing of LGBT voters here has become particularly intense since the Nov. 3 general election, when Councilwoman Mary Norwood and former state Sen. Kasim Reed earned spots in the mayoral runoff.

“I cannot recall a mayor’s race when there’s been so much attention placed on the gay and lesbian vote,” said Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, the state’s largest gay rights group.

“All of a sudden, overnight, it’s like an unbelievable push [to prove] who’s gayer,” added Glen Paul Freedman, chief of staff for City Council President Lisa Borders.

The LA Times reports that gays–who may make up as much as 12 percent of the population in Atlanta–are politically powerful and can change elections in the city. So the candidates, who are both Democrats, are going after the gay vote.

Today, Graham said, Atlanta’s LGBT community is divided over the two choices for mayor.

He said Norwood may have an edge, given her full support of marriage rights. Even though Atlanta’s mayor can have little effect on the state’s ban on gay marriage — passed by 76% of voters in a 2004 referendum — many gays say that the mayor nonetheless has a powerful bully pulpit.

The mayor will have real effects on gay life here, including the selection of a new police chief (Chief Richard Pennington has announced he’ll retire). That decision has gained importance to gays in the wake of the controversial raid of a gay nightclub, the Atlanta Eagle, in September.

The story does a great job of giving the history of the gay vote in Atlanta and the importance gays now play in electing officials. While I’ve seen other outlets say the LGBT vote was important in the election, this is the first story that actually explains why.

But there is one curious question left unanswered: does the LGBT vote break down along race lines? What role does race play for LGBT voters?