The Daily Campus

Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Jake Lucas Lisa Keen discusses a presentation on GLBT and the media yesterday to an audience at the Rainbow Center as part of the Out To Lunch Series.

Lisa Keen, an award-winning journalist who writes about Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) stories, gave a presentation discussing many aspects of GLBT coverage in mainstream media in the Rainbow Center Wednesday afternoon. Keen has worked with major news publications around the country, inluding an editor position at the Washington Blade for 20 years and now as a correspondent for The Boston Globe.

Keen discussed how the media coverage has changed in the past 20 years to the mistakes publications make that change the views on the GLBT community.

Keen personally did not get into news and journalism until after her undergrwaduate work at Virginia Tech and moving to Washington.

Before starting her powerpoint, she began by asking the crowd what kind of sources were used to obtain information about current events. The four sources she brought up were TV, radio, newspapers and the internet. Not surprisingly a majority of the people present raised their hands in the air when Keen asked if the internet was used to access news.

She began reciting statistics of how little GLBT news is represented in newspapers and some startling comparisons were brought up. For example, USA Today articles reach between one and two million readers per year yet the largest GLBT reaching news source, The Advocate, does not even reach a quarter of that. A more local comparison, the Hartford Courant reaches more people than the New York Blade, another GLBT news source.

Despite not being able to reach as big an audience as the GLBT news sources would like, there are over 206 gay publications in operation. The first gay publication of the country was The Advocate which is, as mentioned above, the leading LGBT-focused newspaper.

Keen told the audience that one editor she talked to, said that the mission of his publication "used to be about 'the cause' but now it is all about the business." A lot has happened since 2001, she said; So many publication businesses have changed. Keen also said that the question she gets asked the most is why is a gay news publication of any sort needed? To which she replies the main reason is to give members of the GLBT community the resources they may want that their local newspaper would not provide.

Continued...

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