Atlanta's gay community has lost its Southern Voice.
The city's gay and lesbian weekly has shut its doors after 21 years. Southern Voice, along with David Atlanta, a publication about gay men's nightlife in Atlanta, closed after a long-time financial battle to stay afloat.
Southern's owner, Washington, D.C.-based Window Media LLC, shuttered the weekly newspaper and a handful of other gay publications nationwide over the weekend, the newspaper's editor, Laura Douglas Brown, confirmed to the AJC on Monday.
Employees arrived at the newspaper's offices off of Briarcliff Road early Monday to find the door locked and a sign posted on the front:
"It is with great regret that we must inform you that effective immediately, the operations of Window Media LLC and Unite Media LLC have closed down."
Brown said she got a call from an employee at 7:30. "I came out here because I didn't want anybody to come and read the sign and be by themselves." Brown said.
Window Media is the nation’s largest gay and lesbian newspaper publisher. The company was forced into receivership by the federal Small Business Administration earlier this year.
Staff members have been asked to attend a meeting Wednesday at 11 a.m., at which separation stipulations will be discussed. Employees were also instructed to bring a box to collect their belongings.
Window also owns the Washington Blade, South Florida Blade & 411 Magazine, Genre Magazine and other gay publications.
"This is devastating to the Atlanta community," said Mike Fleming, who worked for David Atlanta until he was laid off in January.
Fleming joined other staff writers, photographers and editors in the parking lot Monday morning.
“It’s a tremendous loss to the gay community and to the queer community,” said Dyana Bagby, the news editor for Southern Voice.
Bagby spent the weekend working on assignments, stopping by the newsroom on Saturday.
“I don’t think anyone realized what was happening,” she said.
Fleming, who spent his last four years at David Atlanta as editor and seven as features editor, said otherwise.
"Things have been terrible for at least five years," he said. He was laid off earlier this year because "they literally couldn't afford me anymore."
Douglas-Brown became editor of Southern Voice three years ago. She spent a total of 12 years with the weekly, having been an intern for six months before Window Media bought it, she said.
The new owners contributed an infusion of cash as well as energy, she said. Having sister publications also beefed up their own coverage, as Douglas-Brown said she could rely upon the Washington Blade to cover a Congressional hearing and use their story.
“We were like our own little gay AP,” she said.
But then the economy began to unravel, cutting into advertising and eventually into the newsroom. About one-third of the staff has been laid off over a couple of years -- going from about 35 to about 20, Douglas Brown said.
“We’ve been doing twice the work with half the people,” she said. Meanwhile, as with mainstream media, Southern Voice was transitioning out of being simply a weekly paper into one with a robust Website that Douglas-Brown said would constantly break news.
Communication between the parent company in Washington and the other publications was lacking. Douglas-Brown said she and the others at Southern Voice found out that Window Media was in receivership by reading the news on another blog.
Window Media's troubles reflect the challenges gay publications are facing nationally, said Todd Evans, president and chief executive officer of Rivendell Media. Several national magazines and newspapers, including the Advocate, one of the nation’s longest-running magazines, are facing closure.
But Evans, whose company buys advertising for the gay media around the nation, insists the issue isn’t advertising. While he admits that advertising revenue has been down for most of the year, it began picking up in the last quarter and the outlook is good for 2010.
“Advertisers went into a panic and stopped buying,” he said of advertising woes earlier this year. They are now spending to make up for lost opportunities, he said. Pharmaceutical and Liquor companies are looking to spend heavily, he said, as World AIDS Day nears and the holidays roll around.
Window Media has been in trouble for years, said Evans, who said he and others expected the publications to be shuttered years ago.
“I’m surprised it (closing of Window Media publications) didn’t happen sooner,” he said.
Window bought gay publications in Houston and New Orleans before buying the Washington and New York Blades. It was an example of what other operators of gay publications were doing in the late 1990s, Evans said. But their buying sprees proved to be too much: Window first closed the Houston and New Orleans publications and then had to shutter the rest.
“Window Media has been through this process of gobbling up and buying everybody,” he said. “Now the chickens have come home to roost.”
“It’s a shame because we have so much business for them right now,” he said, referring to ad sales that are climbing in the fourth quarter. “Atlanta is a strong, vibrant community.”
He said he expects new newspapers will be created in Atlanta and in Washington because both cities have strong readership and because advertisers like niche publications where they can have a laser-like focus on readers..
“I’d be surprised if in a week or two there isn’t something out about a new publication,” he said. “Someone will come up with something new. Southern Voice and the Washington Blade are iconic gay papers.”
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