ABSTRACT
In February of 2001, Henry Scott, the former publisher of the American gay-lifestyle magazine Out, wrote a letter to some two hundred lesbian and gay activists calling upon them to “help halt an effort to create a dangerous monopoly among gay media.” Decrying the recent trend towards mergers in U.S. gay media—notably the purchase of Out by Liberation Publications, Inc. (LPI), owner of The Advocate and Alyson Books, among other properties—Scott was particularly incensed by the merger of PlanetOut and https://Gay.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Gay.com, the largest Web portals aimed at lesbians and gays. “The chief reason for alarm,” he wrote, “is that this combination threatens to further diminish the opportunity for vigorous debate over issues of politics and culture and style that is our community’s greatest strength…. Monopolies don’t foster debate, much less creativity and ingenuity” (Scott 2001; see also Bronski 2001). Scott was not alone. “It seems a game of high-stakes three dimensional chess is being played and the pawns are LGBT people whose information sources are increasingly vulnerable to manipulations,” wrote New York activist Bill Dobbs, for instance. “Heightening this vulnerability is that I know of no regular platform for self-criticism within the LGBT media” (personal communication 2001). From the other side of the political spectrum, writer Andrew Sullivan complained that the “deeply depressing” consolidation of gay media “into one huge blob” has created a “chilling liberal monopoly at PlanetOut,” with “virtually no independent or conservative voices in the mix” (Fost 2001).
