Another GLBT newspaper has stopped its presses indefinitely.
The Memphis Triangle Journal is the latest in a string of niche publications for the GLBT community to fold in the past few weeks. The Triangle Journal has been produced monthly since 1990 by an all-volunteer staff through the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC).
Officials from the center cited "a decreasing cultural reliance upon printed media and a subsequent dwindling of advertising revenues" as reasons for the closure.
The group has also suspended the online version of the newspaper pending the construction of a new MGLCC Web site expected to launch in late summer. However, the group plans to continue providing a monthly e-newsletter to subscribers as well as news updates through Facebook and Twitter. MGLCC officials could not be reached for comment by press time.
The local closure comes on the heels of the abrupt announcement on Nov. 13 that Window Media — which publishes the Southern Voice, Washington Blade, South Florida Blade, 411 Magazine, Houston Voice, David Magazine, and the already-dead Genre — had shut its doors.
For months, Window Media battled with a federal receivership but could not bounce back after the exit of publisher David Unger and a failed attempt to unload the company's properties.
There's no word yet on the future of the gay press in Memphis, though other fallen news sources are already bouncing back.
Less than a week after it closed, TheWashington Blade was relaunched by former-editor Kevin Naff as the DC Agenda. In Atlanta, Southern Voice founder Chris Cash and former editor Laura Douglas-Brown are working to raise that publication from the ashes and recently received a $12,000 grant from the Atlanta-based Lloyd E. Russell Foundation.
Nashville is now home to Tennessee's only two remaining GLBT publications: InsideOut and Out & About Newspaper (O&AN). InsideOut debuted under the name Xenogeny in 1994 with a focus on Nashville's GLBT nightlife. Publisher Linda Welch moved the paper from a weekly to a monthly schedule in September as a result of reduced advertising revenue, marginal circulation gains and an increase in expenses, O&AN previously reported.
O&AN was founded in 2002 by Publisher Jerry Jones and remains Tennessee's monthly GLBT newspaper-of-record.