- Members should join our President Barack Obama group . (Health Care & Gay Rights, Gay Marriage, Repeal DOMA, Don't Ask & Don't Tell)
http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/ObamaBiden 2008/join - Best Gay Male Health, Fitness & Gay Politics @ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Peckers_PICS/join/
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- Bearhug Submission - Roommates (Wrestling fiction)(Your Yahoo Profile must include Age, Gender, Location (to the public) before you apply for membership!): http://groups.
yahoo.com/ group/BearhugSub mission_/ join
- We demand immediate end of DADT. It is out-right discrimination .
- Boycott Bill O'Reilly and FOX News and their advertisers. Bill discussed a French commerical by McDonalds that was meant to show that McDonalds is Gay Friendly. Bill said what is next? Is McDonalds going to be Al-Qaida friendly as well? Further, Bill said that McDonalds would never show a gay friendly commercial in the USA. Yes, Bill comparing Gays to Al-Qaida is disgusting!
- Boycott advertisers of Glenn Beck on Fox News as well as all of FOX NEWS! Glenn has lied about Health-care, called our President a racist, and is anti-gay rights.
- Boycott Arizona because of their uncivilized anti-Immigration Law that encourages racial profiling and increases hatred towards minorities. A remedy: Demand Republicans to support Immigration Reform.
- NEW: Boycott "Target" and "Best Buy" for donating money towards anti-gay political candidates/organizations.
Gay journalists shift focus to keeping jobs
Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle; September 3, 2010
"Nobody has the answers right now," says Curve magazine founder Frances Stevens, speaking during a San Francisco panel discussion to a hotel convention room full of National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association members.
She's not talking about discrimination in the workplace, domestic partner benefits or the mainstream media's coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. She's referring to the economy, and the struggles that print media are facing to survive in the digital age.
Twenty years ago, Oakland Tribune Senior Vice President Leroy Aarons stood before a gathering of editors in Washington, D.C., presented a study on gays and lesbians in the newsroom - then finished by telling the crowd that he was a gay man. That statement made an impact in the community, and later that year Aarons gathered with other local journalists in his Piedmont home, where they founded the NLGJA.
Aarons, who later became executive editor of the Tribune, died in 2004. But the positive results of his efforts are clear by looking at the content of the convention, which started Thursday and finishes Sunday morning. There are sessions dealing with the economy, using social media and creating smart-phone apps. There are few sessions reflecting the major struggles of the past. Instead, they've moved on with topics such as "3G Journalism: Filing From Your Phone."
NLGJA Executive Director Michael Tune says that the mission of the organization has not changed and that discrimination is anything but over - pointing to the fact that he still receives some national LGBT-themed magazines in brown paper bags, to ensure the privacy of the recipient.
But he says topics NLGJA members want covered are different, in part because of the hard work of Aarons and the group's other founders. A survey in the 1990 study said that only 59 percent of gay journalists were out in their newsrooms. By 2000, that number was higher than 90 percent.
"A lot more people are now comfortable being out in the workplace," Tune says. "Which is fantastic - I feel like NLGJA has been doing its job for the last 20 years."
Saluting a founder
The group was founded in 1990, with Aarons and six local journalists, including former Chronicle reporters Elaine Herscher and David Tuller. A newsletter was created, and the first convention was held on the weekend of the Gay Pride Parade in 1992. Members marched in the parade with T-shirts that read: "We're here. We're queer. We're on deadline."
"I don't think any of us realized the extent to which gays and lesbians in their newsrooms were poised to come out," Aarons said in a 2000 interview with The Chronicle. "For the first time, I can safely say, in history, you had 300 gay and lesbian journalists meeting openly together to talk about issues that have plagued and undermined and damaged an entire class of people for centuries."
Randy Alfred, now a copy editor at Wired, has been a member of the NLGJA since its first year. Aarons served as president of the organization until 1997 and remained involved until his death from heart failure related to cancer.
"Roy's charisma helped the organization internally and externally a lot in all of the years he was involved," Alfred says. "I miss Roy's energy as a leader within the organization, and I miss him as a friend."
Coping with cutbacks
Alfred says he thinks the group has made "remarkable progress."
"On the other hand," he says, "it's been 20 years, which is not a short time. I think there's been a lot of progress. (But) I think the organization is still needed. You have to make sure that the progress continues. And sometimes during a recession and a major restructuring of an industry, even maintaining what you've got can be important."
That's the problem that Tune and the organization's leaders face in the coming years. After peaking in 2006 with about 1,300 members, the NLGJA is down to 700 - shrinkage that is mirrored in other professional journalism organizations, union ranks and just about every other group that counts reporters and editors as members.
On the positive side, there's an active and young leadership, which is looking forward, while always heeding the intentions of Aarons and the other founders.
Convention co-chair Matthew Bajko, 35, an assistant editor at the Bay Area Reporter, was a college kid at Indiana University when he was invited to his first NLGJA convention in the mid-1990s. Bajko says the experience was crucial to his professional development, and he wants to make sure young gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender journalists have the same opportunities.
Value of networking
"For me working in LGBT media, it's the one chance in the year to really connect with people in my field," Bajko says. "On a day-to-day basis, you get so caught up in just working on deadline and putting out the paper. This allows us to take some time to relax and talk about concerns and issues."
Two of the younger attendees are 27-year-old Brandon K. Thorp and 21-year-old Penn Bullock (who was a toddler when the first NLGJA convention was held), who are speaking at the convention about their recent Miami New Times series about anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers, who was accused of hiring a male prostitute. Thorp says he came to the convention to network and will decide at the end whether to join the NLGJA.
Thorp's worries are about finding employers who will pay him for good journalism. Coming out in the newsroom isn't something he loses sleep about.
"It's not a huge issue with me," Thorp says. "Simply because if there is some hypothetical newsroom somewhere that would have a problem with a gay writer, I can't imagine I'd want to work there anyway."
"Every gay and lesbian person who has been lucky enough to survive the turmoil of growing up is a survivor. Survivors always have an obligation to those who will face the same challenges."
....Jake
Remember: Boycott Target and Best Buy for donating money towards anti-gay political candidates/organizations and to Proposition 8 (California) to prevent gay marriage. The Formal Boycott began this past weekend. I stopped shopping these stores - even though I want a new washer/dryer and new clothes for the Fall. I would not purchase "Blood Diamonds," nor should a person / organization be contributing funds to both Hitler / Nazi's and the Jews at the same time! Obviously giving money to the Jews and not Hitler/Nazi's is the right thing to do. Hence, these companies violated my trust and well-being. They gave money to my enemy who would terminate me from my job, deny me housing and send me to a Internment camp. Therefore, goodbye Target and Best Buy! The CEO's of these companies have been insensitive to our reaction and do not even comprehend their actions! What takes so long to "fire" these Neanderthals?
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