Sad news for the Northwest. Portland, Oregon's LGBT paper Just Out has ceased publication:
Effective December 26, 2011, Just Out newsmagazine, serving Portland's LGBTQ community since 1983, is no longer in business. Three years of recession have taken their toll.'
The publication's Facebook page:
It is with great sadness that I have to announce today that Just Out newspaper, having put up a helluva fight against this dammed "Great Recession", will be unable to continue publishing. Our 12/9 issue was/is our last publication. Thank you for being our "Friends" and for reading Just Out, these past 29 years…
…About the notion that Just Out will/might continue as an online version. In a word: NO.
Online versions of newspapers serve as a complement to the print edition, not a replacement for. There is not yet a model in place that can produce sufficient revenues to pay for the people who write the news. Online news doesn't just float down from the sky. To maintain credibility articles online still must …be researched, edited, copy edited, fact checked and filtered of opinion and bias. This work is done by professional writers who merit a decent wage for their work. Revenues to pay staff comes in the form of ad sales, be it print or web. In Portland at least, there are not sufficient revenues from any newspaper web site to support expenses separate from the print issue—-and nearly all of these are struggling.
