 | |
| Type | Online newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1974 |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | 285 Shipley Street, San Francisco, California United States [1] |
| Website | www |
The San Francisco Sentinel is an online newspaper serving the LGBTQ communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally a weekly print periodical, the Sentinel covers local San Francisco politics, news and social events, and international news of interest to the gay community.
Several San Francisco newspapers have held the name San Francisco Sentinel. One operated in the 1860s; [2] another was started in 1890 by West-Indies-born Oxford-educated newspaper editor Robert Charles O'Harra Benjamin and his business manager partner L. B. Stephens. This second Sentinel focused on news and opinion of interest to African-American readers. [3]
The modern San Francisco Sentinel began in 1974 as a weekly periodical covering the gay community of San Francisco. It was published by Charles Lee Morris, an activist for gay rights and a local political leader. [4] Morris produced the Sentinel as a weekly periodical paid for by subscriptions and advertisements. It appeared in magazine form with a cover illustration rather than articles in columns on the front. In 1975, Morris hired Randall H. "Randy" Alfred as news editor. Alfred wrote the column "Waves from the Left", and he responded to the first hate crime legislation passing in California by writing, "The days are gone when we can be taken for granted. We are tired of shabby, liberal gestures." [5] Alfred left in 1977 to work for a competing gay newspaper, the San Francisco Bay Times . [6]
In October 1980, the newspaper published a guest editorial written by U.S. presidential candidate John B. Anderson. Anderson wrote that, if elected, he would order the cessation of discrimination in the federal government based on sexual orientation. [7] At the time, the Sentinel boasted a local circulation of 17,000, but the story was picked up by the Associated Press and United Press International wire services and printed in various papers across the country. Publisher Morris said that he thought this was "the first time a major presidential candidate" had written for a gay-oriented newspaper. [8]
Morris moved to Denver in 1984 and died of AIDS in 1986 at the age of 46. [9] [10]
The paper went through several owners, including gay rights activist William "Bill" Beardemphl who bought it in 1981. At the time, Beardemphl was living in Geyserville, California, with his longtime partner John DeLeon. [11] Beardemphl had earlier written a column—"From the Left"—for the Bay Area Reporter , a gay community newspaper founded in 1971 by Bob Ross. Managing Editor Gary Schwiekhart wrote that Beardemphl and Ross, both accomplished chefs, "deeply despised one another, both journalistically and culinarily, and frequently used their newspapers to launch vicious personal attacks" on each other. [12]
Beardemphl hired Jack Nichols as his news editor, and in 1982 brought Alfred back, this time as Editor-in-Chief. [6] Beardemphl refused to use the word gay, preferring homosexual, and he initially thought that the idea of a gay-related immune deficiency disease was a government plot to stop the gay community from having fun. [12] Beardemphl wrote an April Fools' Day editorial in 1982 lampooning the new disease: "Gay Cancer Caused by Brunch". Historian Rodger Streitmatter in Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, writes that this tasteless headline was indicative of the Bay Area gay press's failure to call attention to the epidemic even after it was identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, [13] though Bobbi Campbell had started a regular column in the Sentinel about AIDS a few months earlier. [14] [15] Beardemphl died of prostate cancer in 2002.
In September 1995, new owner Ray Chalker shut the paper down after trying to keep it afloat for one year. [16]
In May 1999, Pat Murphy began publishing The District 6 Sentinel, renamed Sentinel to the San Francisco Sentinel expanding coverage from Supervisorial District 6 to all San Francisco. Murphy's previous website was called "District 6 Sentinel" and was listed as a San Francisco political committee. [17] As a young man, Murphy worked as a cub reporter for the Richmond Independent, the Berkeley Daily Gazette and the San Francisco Chronicle before branching out into editing and advertising.
Murphy has been described as willing to accept money for positive coverage in the Sentinel. In 2005, Supervisor Chris Daly wrote on his official blog that Murphy offered him editorial oversight of articles about Daly, but Daly refused to pay the suggested $1,500. [17] Murphy responded by saying he and his photographer partner, Luke Thomas, do not accept payment for positive coverage. He said the Sentinel makes money from advertising and from sales of photographs. [17]
In September 2006, the Sentinel had gone offline for a brief period during which Thomas left the newspaper after 17 months as co-owner (the co-ownership with Thomas had not been consummated by legal contract) and Editor-in-Chief, writing that he did not wish to follow Murphy's direction in changing the Sentinel into a "pro-business publication". [18] Murphy had removed Thomas' ability to publish immediately following Sentinel publication of a pro-Fidel Castro article about which Thomas neither informed nor consulted Murphy prior to that story's publication. Thomas moved on to found Fog City Journal . Amazon Watch wrote in 2008 that petroleum giant Chevron appeared to be paying Murphy to write positively about Chevron and negatively about its opponents in Ecuador and Nigeria. [19] Amazon Watch described how the Chevron-related posts at the San Francisco Sentinel were Google bombed into much greater prominence than other Sentinel material which ranked very low locally. [19]
On June 6, 2011, SFAppeal.com reported that Thomas hurried left a paid staged political promoting re-election of progressive Mayor Ed Lee: "Michael Petrelis stumbled upon political consultant Enrique Pearce of Left Coast Communications and one of his staffers outside the grocery co-op's 13th Street entrance, where Pearce and Luke Thomas — publisher of news website Fog City Journal and a freelance photographer — were documenting an "apparently homeless" man holding the aforementioned sign begging Ed Lee to run, according to Petrelis's blog. The situation broke up immediately as soon as the filmers realized they were being photographed, according to Petrelis."
In March 2009 while he was "laid low" with emphysema and cirrhosis, Murphy named Sean Martinfield publisher and editor. [20] Murphy continues as owner. As of 2012, Murphy's emphysema remained constant at 30% breathing capacity loss under treatment by San Francisco Dr. Gary Apter. Apter's 2012 evaluation of Murphy's cyrrhosis indicated adequate liver enzyme production adequate to continue normal life.
In March 2011, the San Francisco Police Department revoked the press passes of a number of independent online news outlets including the Sentinel. Josh Wolf wrote that the department's policy indicated the passes were for reporters who "regularly cover fires and breaking police news". [21] Sentinel photographer Bill Wilson expressed dismay at losing his pass. [21]
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), also called Order of Perpetual Indulgence (OPI), is a charitable, protest, and street performance movement that uses drag and religious imagery to satirize issues of sex, gender, and morality and fundraise for charity. In 1979, a small group of gay men in San Francisco began wearing the attire of Catholic nuns in visible situations using camp to promote various social and political causes in the Castro District.
Randy Shilts was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bob Ross was the co-founder and former publisher of the Bay Area Reporter and a key gay rights and AIDS activist in San Francisco. For his lifetime work he was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame for creating two of the "most well-respected and enduring LGBT publications in the country".
Robert Boyle "Bobbi" Campbell Jr. was a public health nurse and an early United States AIDS activist. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis. He was the first to come out publicly as a person with what came to be known as AIDS, writing a regular column in the San Francisco Sentinel, syndicated nationwide, describing his experiences and posting photos of his KS lesions to help other San Franciscans know what to look for, as well as helping write the first San Francisco safer sex manual.
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. Published from 1956 to 1972, The Ladder was the primary monthly publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the US. It was supported by ONE, Inc. and the Mattachine Society, with whom the DOB retained friendly relations. The name of the magazine was derived from the artwork on its first cover, simple line drawings showing figures moving towards a ladder that disappeared into the clouds.
Gaysweek was an American weekly gay and lesbian newspaper based in New York City printed from 1977 until 1979. Considered the city's first mainstream weekly lesbian and gay newspaper, it was founded by Alan Bell in 1977 as an 8-page single-color tabloid and finished its run in 1979 as a 24-page two-color publication. It featured articles, letter, art and poetry. It was, at the time, only one of three weekly publications geared towards gay people. It was also the first mainstream gay publication published by an African-American.
The Bay Area Reporter is a free weekly LGBT newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the largest-circulation LGBT newspapers in the United States, and the country's oldest continuously published newspaper of its kind.
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian, and author. He is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet, described in The New York Times as "an essential reference book" on homosexuality in the US film industry. In 1985, he co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media watchdog organization that strives to end anti-LGBT rhetoric, and advocates for LGBT inclusion in popular media.
Jim Provenzano is an American author, playwright, photographer and currently an editor with the Bay Area Reporter.
Vice Versa (1947–1948), subtitled "America's Gayest Magazine", is the earliest known U.S. periodical published especially for lesbians. Its mission was to express lesbian emotion within the bounds of good taste.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBTQ people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
Drum was an American gay men's culture and news magazine published monthly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, featuring homoerotic photographs as well as news, book reviews, editorials, and fiction. It was published beginning in October 1964 by the homophile activist group the Janus Society as a continuation of the group's monthly newsletter. Edited by Clark Polak, the president of the Janus Society, the magazine represented Polak's radical approach to the homophile movement by emphasizing sexual liberation when other homophile organizations were focused on assimilating with straight society.
Henry A. "Hank" Plante is an American television reporter and newspaper columnist. Winner of the George Foster Peabody Award and multiple Emmys, he covered California for three decades for TV stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He now writes occasional columns for newspapers in California, usually focusing on politics or gay and lesbian issues. One of the first openly gay TV reporters in the United States, Plante is the recipient of various honors from LGBT rights advocacy organizations and trade groups. In addition, Plante was featured in the documentary "5B" 5B (film), which was honored at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The film is about the first AIDS ward in the nation, which Plante covered as a reporter. In 2023 Hank was named a "USC Fellow" as part of the USC Center for the Political Future.
Bay Windows is an LGBT newspaper, published weekly on Thursdays and Fridays in Boston, Massachusetts, serving the entire New England region of the United States. The paper is a member of the New England Press Association and the National Gay Newspaper Guild.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
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.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
Fag Rag was an American gay men's newspaper, published from 1971 until circa 1987, with issue #44 being the last known edition. The publishers were the Boston-based Fag Rag Collective, which consisted of radical writers, artists and activists. Notable members were Larry Martin, Charley Shively, Michael Bronski, Thom Nickels, and John Mitzel. In its early years the subscription list was between 400 and 500, with an additional 4,500 copies sold on newsstands and bookstores or given away.
Jan Zobel was an American activist working for LGBTQ rights and community in the San Francisco Bay area. She was also a tax accountant, and published a book on taxes and recordkeeping for women.
Queer Free is a 1981 novel by Alabama Birdstone. It is about a right-wing takeover of the American government by the "New Right", a religiously fundamentalist organization, which sentences gays and lesbians to extermination camps. It received mixed critical reception in the gay press and by LGBT academics.
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