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11/01/2009
The Advocate Denies Report of 'Gutted' Masthead, Downsizing
On Friday, Queerty reported that Regent Media had "gutted" The Advocate, firing approximately 13 staffers, and that the publication going forward would cease to exist in its current form and be a 32-page insert folded into OUT magazine.
While there was no confirmation on the number of layoffs, Advocate editor-in-chief Jon Barrett posted a lengthy letter from general manager Stephen Macias on his Facebook page, responding to Queerty's David Hauslaib regarding the post.
Here's the letter:
Dear David,
I wanted to take a moment to speak to the inaccuracies of your story and to the strength of The Advocate brand.
Clearly, 2009 has been one of the most challenging economic periods for all businesses in the United States. Moving strong, lean businesses forward in 2010 requires that business models adapt. This company cares very much about the history of the most important LGBT national news brand and is making careful and thoughtful decisions to ensure its survival and to position it for growth. We are reorganizing departments to make that happen. That said, we are all very grateful for the work our departing staff members contributed--just as we are of those who continue to work with the company.
First, The Advocate staff has not been "gutted" as you write. We are, however, making strategic and sometimes difficult staff changes in order to support all iterations of The Advocate brand. The print expression (which will vary in size from month to month as it always has), will continue on its monthly schedule. Our website (which has quadrupled its traffic in the past 16 months) will be relaunched early next year with enhanced technology that will add dimension to the breaking news and features stories our editors and reporters are already delivering on a several-times-a-day basis. So what does that mean for The Advocate reader? We'll still ask tough questions of the White House press secretary around issues like DADT, we'll still deliver online live video coverage of key events like today's passage of the Ryan White Care Act, and we'll report critical news around topics like the Defense of Marriage Act--only now you'll get more of it (in a more timely manner) than ever before.
Letter continued, AFTER THE JUMP...
The Advocate brand will also expand, as previously announced, to include a monthly hour-long television magazine that will be broadcast on our sister brands here! TV and Gay.com and of course on Advocate.com. We are currently in production, and on schedule, for the show's February launch. Modeled after CBS's tremendously esteemed 60 Minutes, this program will explore the critical issues of the day through the Advocate lens.
All Advocate subscribers will continue to receive their print editions of the magazine, and editor in chief Jon Barrett (who is still employed with the company despite an earlier Queerty report that he had been fired) has been promoted to Advocate editorial director--overseeing all expressions of extensions of the brand.
With regard to HIV Plus magazine, it will continue to be published under the leadership of editor in chief Michael Edwards. In fact, while Queerty was propagating this inaccurate story, our staff was working closely with AIDS Project Los Angeles in preparation for a fundraiser for the group (in conjunction with HIV Plus) at the home of our CEO Paul Colichman.
Speaking of Mr. Colichman and our chairman, Stephen Jarchow. These two men have invested a great deal of time, energy, and resources not only into building a vibrant, collaborative workplace but into rebuilding, sustaining, and growing some of our community's most important brands. Mr. Jarchow has passed on his commitment to the LGBT community to his lesbian daughter, Boo, who in addition to working at The Advocate and on Shewired.com, was an instrumental young leader in organizing last month's March on Washington. I hope other young people follow her good example as we all need to part of the solution for LGBT equality. One final note on your personal attacks: Mr. Colichman takes great umbrage to the characterization that he prances around the office; he pictures himself much more as an optimistic skipper. We have that from "multiple sources."
Here Media continues to evolve and integrate its many properties with care and respect in challenging times. In fact, The Advocate--throughout its four decades of service--is a great model when it comes to embracing change. It began in 1967 as a mimeographed newsletter, evolved into a broadsheet newspaper, transitioned into a tabloid, and then blossomed in its current glossy iteration. The Advocate will continue to grow--especially online and on air--while maintaining its high standards in print.
On Wednesday, thousands of Advocate readers went to Advocate.com to watch live video coverage of long-overdue passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. No other news site in the world thought the moment was important enough to cover live, but The Advocate did--and the Advocate will continue to do so. ***
Stephen Macias
***NOTE - Actually, Towleroad streamed the signature of the hate crimes bill live, as well as Obama's lifting of the HIV travel and immigration ban.
Posted 1:20 PM EST by Andy Towle in Gay Media, Magazines, News | Permalink
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If Gourmet has been dismantled, why should be a surprise that the Advocate has been gutted? The age of print magazines is over. How many people reading towleroad.com even subscribe to the Advocate anyway? Maybe 10, maybe 50, probably not 100.
Posted by: JeffNYC | Nov 1, 2009 2:12:33 PM
Perhaps you should clarify what you meant by "gutted": their staff, or their page count? I assume you meant the former primarily, and nothing in this official reply leads me to think otherwise.
Posted by: joe c | Nov 1, 2009 3:10:16 PM
I used to read the Advocate. That was ten years ago. Sorry, but that's the way it goes.
Posted by: Rob | Nov 1, 2009 3:22:42 PM
Hunh, it's obviously being gutted. The lady "Jon Barrett" doth protest too much.
Posted by: Marc | Nov 1, 2009 3:53:22 PM
Glad to hear that the Advocate isn't going away...however it used to be a must read. Now the latest copy lies around my apartment unread for a while. It lost its sense of timeliness...
And so glad to hear the website is being relaunched; the current design just isn't working.
And on that note, why didn't the Advocate post this letter on its own website?
Posted by: qjersey | Nov 1, 2009 3:57:00 PM
In a way, I do find it unfortunate what is happening to print media. I used to buy the Advocate regularly. I felt relatively well-informed on things that were happening a month or so prior.
When I was coming out, I had an amazing epiphany the first time I nervously placed the Advocate in front of a chain supermarket's cashier in a very non-gay neighborhood in a red-neck city and saw her smile, show me her gay lapel pin and say, "One of the family."
Then the internet really took off and Towleroad came along. Now I get far more information for free, sometimes within minutes after it has happened.
I recall saying to my partner this past Spring, "Towleroad says Michael Jackson died a few minutes ago!" and he said, "Oh, come on, if that were true, it would be all over the media." (Soon, of course, it was.) The Advocate I can PAY for at the grocery store just can't compete with that.
Posted by: GregV | Nov 1, 2009 4:05:05 PM
The Advocate lost its way.
In the current (Nov 2009) issue, I counted seven pages of editorial content that could appear in any magazine (eight if you count their vapid "Big Gay Following" feature in which they interview some straight celebrity whom I've never heard of). What a waste of pages!
Do LGBT people buy Blu-Ray players in a different fashion than straight people? Was "Up" a particularly gay movie? Are my dumbbell rows somehow different from the straight guy a few benches over?
Sure, there are many ways in which my life is just like everyone else's but I don't need an LGBT magazine to focus on them.
If I were running a LGBT magazine, I'd want pieces like the one on gay teens in the midwest recently in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. I'd want investigative journalism on NOM.
The Advocate got lazy and disconnected from its successes as the magazine of the gay rights movement. I don't think the Internet killed the Advocate. I think it was suicide through puff-piece journalism.
Posted by: John D | Nov 1, 2009 6:39:34 PM
What every company of any size needs is a cash cow. Once they have the cash cow (which Regent has had for years with one thing and one thing only: their lowest common denominator production deals with long time partners that enable them to get steady returns for fairly vapid content), they can expand into other things, but should proceed cautiously. Regent actually did that, getting very good prices for some real crown jewels in their space: the carcass of the once great gay.com, LPI... and thankfully not the Queen Mary. But in the process they behaved (well, some of them behaved) atrociously. But that's not what did the damage. What did the damage was bad luck. Every company has good people and atrocious people, high overhead and high expectations. But not every company gets into a situation where the cash cow gives out only so much milk, while the barn roof above it blows off in an economic tornado. This is not the end of the pain, or the cutting. There are more "ends" ahead, I predict.
Posted by: Pee Town | Nov 1, 2009 9:06:46 PM
David Hauslaib is an evil little self-hating Jew anyway, who is always making up stuff, so who cares what Queerty reports anyway?
Posted by: JT | Nov 1, 2009 11:10:22 PM
I remember when gay men who placed ads in the "Advocate" for hook-ups, relationships or whatever would specify "no fats, blacks or fems". To each his own, of course, but the "Advocate" will not be missed by me.
Posted by: elg | Nov 2, 2009 5:57:32 AM
I'm a professional who used to advertise in the Advocate (No, I'm a Realtor).
The ad was expensive and I was told to buy a copy on the newsstand if I wanted to see what it looked like in print. In other words it was to much trouble to send a tear sheet or God forbid, an an actual copy.
The only interest I ever got off that ad were lonely men wanting sex, not to sell their house.
Posted by: chasmader | Nov 2, 2009 7:32:14 AM
good riddance to that POS obama administration propaganda rag. I guess their readers finally wised up to who they really are an advocate for. And could you guys quit repeating the lie that Obama "lifted the HIV travel ban"? he did no such thing. It was repealed before his election, and he simply allowed it to follow the channels for the repeal to be implemented. Even George W. Bush supported it. Again you are all to willing to give him credit for not actively discriminating against us. Maine will lose gay marriage because of Obama's cowardice on the gay rights issue while he continues to defend DOMA in MA, arguing his admin is obligated to. Meanwhile they tell the FBI to stop enforcing federal drug laws. Obama: Coward, Bigot, Liar.
Posted by: gch | Nov 2, 2009 9:01:26 AM
John D nails it: Despite the challenging economy, the Advocate magazine simply fails to deliver quality LGBT reading. I thought the redesign this year was to focus its editorial on more hard-hitting and investigative pieces, such as the Barney Frank profile that ran recently in the New Yorker or the gay teens profiled in New York Magazine. Face it, most of the groundbreaking gay journalism has not appeared in LGBT magazines. That's a huge problem. I subscribe to The Advocate and honestly haven't found anything worth reading in over a year. Totally bland non-gay snoozefest.
However... the Advocate web site is showing much promise and I do read it daily. I hope the powers that be focus attention and money on the web site and nurture (and pay handsomely) a stable of political reporters such as Kerry Eleveld. Then we'll all have something to be proud of.
Posted by: Trog | Nov 2, 2009 10:55:04 AM
JT gets it right in another way:
"No blacks, fats, straights" need apply for any openings at Regent as well. Take a bigger look at the layoffs these people make. Not a great way for building bridges to the future.
Posted by: Banerjee | Nov 2, 2009 12:52:43 PM
I watched both streams here on Towleroad. I visit Towleroad multiple times almost every day. But when Macias mentions no other "news site" thinking to stream these events themselves, I have to agree with him.
In my opinion - blogs are not news sites. They're blogs. They aggregate content from other sites. Without news sites, blogs like Towleroad would not exist... I mean... until Towleroad starts reporting ALL their own stories and content. In which case they'd be, um... a news site and not a blog.
But I loves me some Towleroad. And I'll continue the combination of aggregate and original content.
Posted by: Billy | Nov 3, 2009 12:47:27 AM
Last sentence: "And I'll continue to enjoy the combination..."
Posted by: Billy | Nov 3, 2009 9:49:41 AM