Type LGBT weekly newspaper Founded 1994 | Editor Paul Schindler Language English | |
Owner(s) NYC Community Media, LLC Founder(s) Troy Masters, Paul Schindler | ||
Gay City News is a free weekly newspaper based in New York City that focuses on local and national issues relating to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. It was founded in 1994 as Lesbian Gay New York, later LGNY, and was sold to Community Media LLC, owner of The Villager, in 2002, which renamed the publication. It is the largest LGBT newspaper in the United States, with a circulation of 47,000.
Gay City News came into existence after several incarnations. The newspaper began to form in the late 1980s after the collapse of the LGBT newsmagazine OUTWEEK (which came into existence in 1989 to compete against the then-dominant New York Native—which itself folded in 1997). OUTWEEK was famous for firebrand activist style journalism and provided groundbreaking coverage of a then nascent gay civil rights movement. It was one of the first publications to undertake scientific reporting on the growing AIDS crisis.
After an investor squabble that closed the magazine, Troy Masters, then an advertising director at OUTWEEK, led the formation of a group to create a new publication; that publication became known as QW (or "QueerWeek"), the first glossy gay magazine, and was funded by William F. Chafin. Mr. Chafin died before the publication could make a profit, and the magazine was closed upon his death.
Two years later, Masters sought to establish a newspaper and founded LGNY (Which stood for "Lesbian-Gay New York"). LGNY published for eight years and was relaunched in 2002 as Gay City News.
Its current editor-in-chief is Paul Schindler, and the associate editor is Duncan Osborne.