(Gay Star News homepage)
U.K.-based LGBTQ publication Gay Star News is closing immediately after running for eight years.
Gay Star News founders Tris Reid-Smith and Scott Nunn announced the news on the website saying that the publication is “now more widely read, watched and loved by the international LGBTI audience than ever” but “our problem has been entirely financial.”
BBC News LGBTQ correspondent Ben Hunte reported that Gay Star News entered insolvency and will cease trading on July 30. The Gay Star News staff of 20 people was only given 48 hours notice that the publication would be shuttering.
Nunn and Reid-Smith blamed their financial woes on companies that they say “rainbow wash” during Pride month instead of supporting LGBTQ interests year-round.
“There has also been another trend which has become more apparent this year. Brands which are wishing to ‘do’ LGBTI work are increasingly doing so in a tokenistic way,” they write. “Rather than working with us to engage and serve LGBTI people year-round, many have chosen to ‘rainbow wash’. They have turned their logo rainbow-colored for Pride week or month and – at best – made a small donation to an LGBTI good cause. Worst still, we have learned that some brands have done this while at the same time funding anti-LGBTI politicians to the tune of millions of dollars. Tokenism has reached a new low.”
The goodbye note concluded, “Until the very end we had good reason to believe we would survive. We have fought through and won through so many times. We were incredibly close. But this one has broken us, and truly broken our hearts.”
Gay Star News launched in 2011. It’s coverage included business, health, international news, politics, pop culture and more.
