 | |
| Categories | Gay news periodical |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Weekly |
| First issue | June 26, 1989 |
| Final issue | June 1991 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
OutWeek was a gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two-year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a cool new sensibility in lesbian and gay journalism.
OutWeek was originally conceived by musician and producer Gabriel Rotello. As a member of the activist group ACT UP, Rotello felt that New York needed a publication that would represent ACT UP's new, more radical approach to activism.[ citation needed ]
At the same time, businessman and ACT UP member Kendall Morrison was planning to start a New York magazine that would provide a venue for advertising his popular gay phone sex businesses.[ citation needed ] Although neither Rotello nor Morrison had any experience in journalism, the two decided to team up, with Morrison acting as publisher and Rotello as editor-in-chief.
From its first issue on June 26, 1989, OutWeek attracted considerable attention and the magazine repeatedly broke major stories both in New York and nationally.
In the January 21, 1990, issue, Outweek covered the Covenant House sex scandal and had an exclusive interview with Father Bruce Ritter's main accuser, Kevin Kite. [1] Ritter was accused of sexual abuse and financial misconduct during his time as the head of Covenant House, a "faith based social service organization". [2]
Also in that issue, OutWeek took part in a major local controversy by revealing that the newly appointed health commissioner of New York City, Woodrow A. Myers, advocated the "mandatory name reporting, contact tracing and quarantining" of people with AIDS. [3] As New York's Mayor David Dinkins appointed Meyers, the subsequent controversy impacted him and pitted his gay supporters against his black supporters, leading The New York Times to call the dispute "by far the most bitter" of the Dinkins administration. [4]
By repeatedly breaking major stories, and through its intense coverage of the AIDS crisis, OutWeek became a significant journalistic presence in New York.
OutWeek is probably best remembered for sparking the "outing" controversy. This began in Michelangelo Signorile's "GossipWatch" columns, in which the fiery writer railed against then-closeted public figures like David Geffen and Liz Smith for what he considered their complicity in a culture of silence around AIDS and gay rights.
Outing in this context refers to the practice of revealing the sexual orientation of another person without permission. [5] The new use of this term was popularized in 1990 by Time magazine [5] in an article titled "Forcing Gays Out of the Closet" which defined outing as "the intentional exposure of secret gays by other gays". [6] Activists employed the use of outing in response to the silence or lack of support of public figures in regards to the AIDS epidemic with the goal of making the people they outed more supportive of the movement. [7]
On the death of Malcolm Forbes, tycoon, multimillionaire, and editor in chief of Forbes magazine, in early 1990, [8] OutWeek pushed the issue of outing to the limit by publishing a cover story "The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes". This March 18, 1990, issue of OutWeek included articles about Forbes titled "Claiming Forbes for the Gay Nation", [9] "The Other Side of Malcolm", [10] and "Working in the Capitalist Closet". [11] This story became a media sensation and prompted significant debates over the practice of outing. [12] Major news sources that discussed this controversy included the Sun Sentinel, the Los Angeles Times , and The Washington Post . [13] [14] [15] In their book Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, Warren Johansson and William A. Percy state that the editorial "Claiming Forbes for the Gay Nation" was "the manifesto of outing" and argue that "OutWeek's bold move marked a new phase in the struggle to tear down the closet door." [16]
Besides full-fledged exposés, OutWeek practiced outing through Michelangelo Signorile's "Peek-A-Boo" boxes which simply contained names of individuals and left the rest up to the reader's interpretation. [17] The "Peek-A-Boo" box in the August 1, 1989, issue had sixty-six names including Michael Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Olivia Newton-John, and John Travolta. [18]
Ironically, OutWeek outed only a handful of public figures during its existence, mostly in Signorile's column. However, its vigorous defense of the idea that the media should treat the homosexuality of public figures the way it treats any other aspect of their private lives galvanized supporters, outraged opponents and forever stamped the magazine as the place where outing began.
In June 1991 it published its last edition, almost two years after it first appeared. It published 105 issues in all, and The New York Times reported OutWeek's circulation at between 30,000 and 40,000 copies. [19] Despite its journalistic awards and avid readership, OutWeek struggled to make a profit. According to The New York Times, the closing was the result of financial problems and fighting within the leadership. [19]
In its article on the demise of Outweek, The New York Times noted that "Outweek established itself from the start as the most progressive of the gay publications. Its controversial practice of 'outing'—exposing public figures who are gay and lesbian—and its support of ACT UP and Queer Nation, two activist gay organizations, brought it national notoriety." [19] "
Despite its brief existence, OutWeek left a significant legacy in many areas.
The magazine's constant presence in the general media, and its sparking of repeated controversies, helped bring gay and AIDS issues into the mainstream.
Within the gay press, OutWeek caused a major shakeup. The Advocate , the nation's oldest gay publication, saw its circulation decline relative to OutWeek.[ citation needed ] The result was a major revamp of the magazine. In 1990, The Advocate became a "gay and lesbian" publication for the first time, instead of just a magazine for gay men, and began to focus far more on politics and AIDS activism. Many other gay and lesbian publications became far feistier, and it is sometimes said that OutWeek pioneered a "new gay journalism".[ citation needed ]
Outing has become relatively mainstream, and the journalistic rules regarding the disclosure of the sexual orientation of public figures is now largely in keeping with OutWeek's original goals. For example, when publishing mogul Jann Wenner left his wife in the late 1990s, The Wall Street Journal reported on its front page - and without Wenner's permission - that he had begun a relationship with a younger man. [20]
OutWeek also stirred significant controversy by its use of the term "queer" as an inclusive and radical way to describe gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. [21] The term was used several times in the first issue of OutWeek and in many of the following issues. [22] The use of the word queer in this way is now relatively common, appearing in the titles of TV shows like Queer as Folk and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy .
OutWeek also made inroads in the recognition of the LGBTQ community as a powerful consumer base when advertising executive Colleen Mangan convinced Michel Roux, president and CEO of Carillon Importers to commit to a year-long contract for Absolut Vodka to appear on the back cover of OutWeek on a biweekly basis. Although Absolut had previously appeared in The Advocate , the contract with OutWeek is believed to be the first ongoing and regularly-scheduled contract for a major brand to advertise in gay media.
In regards to its impact, Time magazine wrote: "The magazine had earned recognition for its reporting on AIDS, homophobic assaults and gay politics, but its greatest success was in shaking up its competitors by challenging their brand of gay activism with a more militant stance." [23] The New York Times had a similar stance, stating that "OutWeek gave voice to a new generation of AIDS activists who had not previously had a public voice and provided a rallying point for the more militant members of the gay community." [19]
During OutWeek's existence, Rotello assembled a staff of young writers and editors. For many it was their first job in journalism, yet a large number went on to significant careers.
Michelangelo Signorile became a well-known columnist, lecturer and author (Queer in America, Outing Yourself), and is now a popular talk-radio host on Sirius OutQ.
Arts editor Sarah Pettit became the executive editor of Out magazine, then editor-in-chief, and then the arts editor of Newsweek , before her death from cancer in 2003. [24]
Copy editor Walter Armstrong became the editor-in-chief of POZ magazine.
Staffers Dale Peck, Karl Soehnlein and Jim Provenzano all became well-known novelists.
Columnist Michael Goff founded Out magazine and was its first editor and president. He later became general manager of Microsoft's MSN, and Dan Gillmor's partner in early citizen journalism effort, Bayosphere.
Staffer Victoria Starr became an author and the biographer of k.d. lang.
Production Manager Diana Osterfeld worked in desktop publishing (both creating magazines and training others at IMAGE Inc.) for many years before returning for a master's degree in architecture at University of Texas at Austin. She is now in the process of becoming a licensed architect.
Reporter David Kirby became a New York Times reporter and author of a best-selling exposé on the alleged relationship between mercury and autism, Evidence of Harm.
Columnist James St. James wrote the memoir Disco Bloodbath , later made into a 1998 documentary and a 2003 feature film starring Macaulay Culkin, both called Party Monster.
Advertising executives Colleen Mangan and Troy Masters founded the highly acclaimed weekly, QW Magazine, which, on the verge of becoming profitable, ceased operations when CEO and chief investor William (Bill) Chafin succumbed to AIDS. Masters went on to found the New York weekly Gay City News and became its publisher, and is now publisher of the Los Angeles Blade . Mangan became an expert in the field of desktop publishing and went on to become a top information architect and usability specialist as the internet took hold.
Columnist Maria Maggenti is a highly regarded independent film director (The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love; Puccini for Beginners).
Rotello himself became the first openly gay columnist for a major newspaper ( New York Newsday ), later authored the best selling book Sexual Ecology , and is now a TV documentary producer/director for HBO, Bravo and other networks.
Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. It is often done for political reasons, either to instrumentalize homophobia in order to discredit political opponents or to combat homophobia and heterosexism by revealing that a prominent or respected individual is homosexual. Historical examples of outing include the Krupp affair, Eulenburg affair, and Röhm scandal.
Michelangelo Signorile is an American journalist, author and talk radio host. His radio program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada on Sirius XM Radio and globally online. Signorile was editor-at-large for HuffPost from 2011 until 2019. Signorile is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues.
Malcolm Stevenson Forbes was an American entrepreneur and politician most prominently known as the publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B. C. Forbes. He was known as an avid promoter of capitalism and free market economics and for an extravagant lifestyle, spending on parties, travel, and his collection of homes, yachts, aircraft, art, motorcycles, and Fabergé eggs.
The Advocate is an American LGBT magazine, printed bi-monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a website. Both magazine and website have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people. The magazine, established in 1967, is the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the United States and the only surviving one of its kind that was founded before the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, an uprising that was a major milestone in the LGBT rights movement. On June 9, 2022, Pride Media was acquired by Equal Entertainment LLC.
Douglas Gabriel Rotello is an American musician, writer and filmmaker. He created New York's Downtown Divas revues in the 1980s, was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of OutWeek magazine, became the first openly gay columnist at a major American newspaper, New York Newsday, and authored the book Sexual Ecology. He now makes documentaries for HBO, The History Channel and other networks.
Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men is a 1997 book by gay activist Gabriel Rotello, who discusses why HIV has continued to infect large numbers of gay men despite the widespread use of condoms and why a number of experts believe that new HIV infections will disproportionately affect gay men in the future. Rotello examines the origins and timeline of the AIDS epidemic, drawing on epidemiology, sociology, gay history, and ecology. His conclusion is that gay men need to reduce their number of partners and increase condom use to bring the infection rate down. Rotello's central argument derives from the epidemiological concept that sexually-transmitted epidemics are the result of three factors, sometimes called the Triad of Risk: the "infectivity" of a sexually transmitted disease (STD), or how easily it spreads; the "prevalence" of that STD in a particular group, and 3. the ‘contact rate,’ or the average number of sexual partners that people have within a particular group.
Jennifer Vanasco is an American journalist at WNYC public radio in New York, where she's an editor in the newsroom and writes about culture, theater and New York news. She created and wrote the Minority Reports column for Columbia Journalism Review, is a former syndicated columnist for the gay press, and was the editor in chief of the defunct 365gay.com and a theater critic for the Chicago Reader.
Jim Provenzano is an American author, playwright, photographer and currently an editor with the Bay Area Reporter.
Michael Rogers is an American fundraiser, blogger and gay rights activist. He is vice chairman of Raw Story Media, Inc., co-owner of Alternet Media, and founder and Director of Netroots Connect. He is also known for his work in reporting on closeted gay politicians who are anti-gay. He was the subject of the 2009 American documentary film Outrage.
Sydney Pokorny was an American lesbian writer, editor, columnist and activist based in New York. She graduated from Vassar College in 1988 with a degree in art history. The author of numerous articles on topics ranging from "Madonna Studies" to art criticism and the AIDS epidemic; she also cowrote the Lambda Literary Award nominated So You Want to be a Lesbian? with Liz Tracey.
Gay City News is a free weekly LGBT newspaper based in New York City focusing on local and national issues relating to 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.
Jay Blotcher is an American activist, journalist, and editor. He was active in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in its early years, serving as chair of the media committee, and was a founding member of Queer Nation.
Outrage is a 2009 American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick. The film presents a narrative discussing the hypocrisy of people purported in the documentary to be closeted gay or bisexual politicians who promote anti-gay legislation. It premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival before being released theatrically on May 8, 2009. It was nominated for a 2010 Emmy Award, and won Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival's jury award for best documentary. The documentary's prime subject was Michael Rogers, founder of BlogActive.com.
Lawrence D. Mass is an American physician and writer. A co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis, he wrote the first press reports in the United States on an illness later became known as AIDS. He is the author of numerous publications on HIV, hepatitis C, STDs, gay health, psychiatry and sex research, and on music, opera, and culture. He is also the author/editor of four books/collections. In 2009 he was in the first group of physicians to be designated as diplomates of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Since 1979, he has lived and worked as a physician in New York City, where he resided with his life partner, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz. Having written for the New York Native since the 1970s, he currently writes a column for The Huffington Post. An archival collection of his papers are at the New York Public Library.
K.M. (Karl) Soehnlein is the American author of the novels The World of Normal Boys (2000), a 1970s coming-of-age story that won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When (2005), set in San Francisco during the Beat era of 1960 and the dot-com boom of 2000; and Robin and Ruby (2010), which follows the brother and sister characters of The World of Normal Boys into the mid-1980s.
Sex Panic!, sometimes rendered SexPanic! or Sex Panic, was a sexual activism group founded in New York City in 1997. The group characterized itself as a "pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-racist direct action group" campaigning for sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. It was founded to oppose both mainstream political measures to control sex, and elements within the gay community who advocated same-sex marriage and the restriction of public sexual culture as solutions to the HIV crisis. The group has been depicted as a faction in a gay "culture war" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Michael Anthony Petrelis is an American AIDS activist, LGBTQ rights activist, and blogger. He was diagnosed with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1985 in New York City, New York. As a member of the Lavender Hill Mob, a forerunner to the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, he was among the first AIDS activists to protest responses to the disease. He was a co-founding member of ACT UP in New York City, New York, and later helped organize ACT UP chapters in Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire, as well as the ACT UP Presidential Project. Petrelis was also a founding member of Queer Nation/National Capital, the Washington D.C. chapter of the militant LGBTQ rights organization.
Jeffrey Schmalz was an American journalist who spent his entire career of more than 20 years with The New York Times. He is best known for his groundbreaking reporting on the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and its impact on the LGBT community at that time.
Malcom Gregory Scott also known as Greg Scott, is an American writer, activist, and AIDS survivor. In 1987, the United States Navy (USN) discharged him for homosexuality, after which Scott worked to overturn the Department of Defense (DoD) directive prohibiting the military service of lesbian and gay Americans. Upon his discharge, Scott also learned he had tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). He was active in the Washington, D.C., chapters of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Scott was an advocate for legal access to medical marijuana, a critic of early HIV prevention education strategies, and a proponent for expanded academic research to support the public policy goals of queer communities. American journalist Michelangelo Signorile once called Scott "the proudest queer in America." Scott worked as a writer for Fox Television's America's Most Wanted, and his writing has appeared in several newspapers and magazines. Scott nearly died of Stage IV AIDS in 1995 and credited marijuana with his survival until effective anti-retroviral therapies became available.
Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics is a 2005 book about gay conservatism by the historian Paul A. Robinson. It received both supportive and critical commentary.