DList is closing down

I just got an email that DList is closing its virtual doors. I must have registered on the site once in order to be getting the email, but I don't really remember it. Still, I remember its name. This is part of the larger consolidation in gay politics. We used to have hundreds of relevant gay papers around the country. As advocates we'd often go to them first to get our stories out there. Now, we go to two, maybe three papers - the Advocate, the Blade, and Metro Weekly. That's 3 reporters. There used to be hundreds.

Part of the reason there's been a paring down of papers is economic, part of it is probably practical too. With the Internet, it's hard to write a weekly or monthly publication about news everyone heard about 5 minutes after it came out. But there's a problem here. Straight press just doesn't often get the nuance of our issues the way the gay press does, did. And the straight press also isn't always interested in a gay story to the degree the gay press would be.

Then there are the gay blogs. When I started doing gay advocacy back in the early 90s, there were no blogs, there wasn't even an Internet (at least there wasn't a World Wide Web). Now, with the Net, we have lots of independent gay advocates, including gossip advocates like Perez Hilton and Queerty. But with the bad economy, we nearly lost Queerty, one gay blogger is now working for/with HRC, another has joined up with a larger "straight" blog, and the rest are having just as hard a time as every other publication trying to make ends meet in an economy that simply isn't getting much better.

Businesses die. It's part of the Darwin of capitalism. But I worry that in gay politics and gay media we're losing some very good people, and some very good resources. And nothing is taking its place.