Abstract

The Other Gay Media

America Online Inc.'s buyout of Time Warner Inc., may have been this year's largest new media/old media merger, but in terms of sheer market consolidation, PlanetOut's purchase of Liberation Publications in late March was the most unabashedly triumphant. HIV positive magazines. PlanetOut became a multimedia conglomerate for the new economy. With the merger, PlanetOut not only owns the two largest gay and lesbian magazines in the country, but controls a broadband distribution network that, in the words of CEO Megan Smith, will allow the company to "touch the customer twenty-four hours a day." Models of gay-lifestyle journalism already exist. Some of the most socially vital and widely read gay publications are neither national gay magazines nor gay and lesbian newspapers but local nightlife guides.