• by Danielle Oster , Yesterday

Earlier this month, the LGBTQ+ Media Mapping Project published an in-depth report about the state of LGBTQ+ media, primarily focused on state and local outlets.

Project Director Tracy Baim, who also co-founded the LGBTQ+ publication “Windy City Times,” told Marketing Daily the project shows the extent to which LGBTQ+ media is underfunded.

The study confirmed a current count of 105 local/state outlets and 69 national active outlets. Of the 64 outlets that responded to the survey question on money, 46.9% had an annual budget under $100,000.

“Most are operating at a low budget, even national outlets,” Baim said, which she characterized as not just a problem for LGBTQ+ audiences and publications, “but also a media problem” at a time when there are broader challenges for local media across the board.

According to the report, LGBTQ+ outlets are currently “facing strong headwinds as advertising and sponsors reverse course, pulling back from diverse marketing efforts.”

While the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights and expression presents additional challenges, the largest driver of funding shortfalls predates the current administration. A significant part of the problem is declining revenue from advertising, as media outlets compete with large social networks for ad dollars.

“Prior to this administration, the devastation was real,” Baim said. “The current landscape does make it more difficult for advertising in LGBTQ+ media, but advertising was already sliding.”

The majority of LGBTQ+ local media surveyed said they rely on advertising as their primary source of income, with 19 outlets relying on ad revenue for 100% of their income, and only two outlets who don’t rely on any income from advertising. And, for more than half of outlets, advertising represents more than 70% of their income.

There are also significant disparities for outlets focused on state and local coverage, with some areas “news deserts” devoid of LGBTQ+ media. The report found that 18 states had no noticeable LGBTQ+ media coverage at all. An interactive map published as part of the project shows this encompasses a large region of the north Midwest, as well as New England north of Massachusetts.

The report found that 28 of the 79 outlets sampled have no full-time employees, which the project noted was a likely underrepresentation. Nine outlets reported having just one full-time employee.Only six outlets reported having 6-10 employees.

“Gaps in coverage are real…at a time where LGBTQ+ coverage is more needed than ever,” Baim said. “Even within LGBTQ+ media, there are disparities in [coverage of issues impacting] people of color, and trans and gender-non-conforming identities. A lot of times marginalized communities are not represented.”

Only one state/local publication focused on the trans community.

“On a local level, it doesn’t make sense to be more segmented,” Baim explained. “There was more segmentation when there were more resources and [ad revenue].”

Collaboration between local outlets, including LGBTQ+ publications collaborating with other local outlets, LGBTQ+ reporters embedded in local publications, and fractional officers like social media managers working across myriad publications, present another way to tackle the issue.

One bright spot of the study was finding the degree to which there’s openness to such collaboration.

“Ten years ago, very few were interested in collaboration,” Baim said. “Now they’re willing to think of collaboration, because it has been shown to be successful.”

Another bright spot, Baim noted, was a greater degree of opportunity for independent journalism, even if it was difficult for marginalized journalists to make it their sole source of income.

“The cost to start a publication now is almost zero,” Baim said. “Because so many can get into media…it’s so much more dispersed, which makes it more stable [in some ways].”

At the same time, she noted the downsides to relying on online channels.

“It’s both exciting and scary, because the gatekeepers of [the pre-internet past] kept us out, and tech gatekeepers of today are trying to keep us out. We’re finding ways around them, but so much of the information out there now is impermanent,” Baim said.

This is particularly concerning at a time when efforts from the Trump administration and its allies to erase or rewrite the history of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and LGBTQ+ history, are so readily evident.

“Now it can be destroyed with the push of a button, so  it’s more vulnerable in that way,” she added. "We need to make sure we’re saving information offline, and making it permanent.”

This may help explain the degree to which LGBTQ+ publications still publish print editions. Sixty-seven percent of the local outlets responding to the survey reported publishing a print edition, 68% of which provide original news reporting and culture coverage, with an average print run of 16,000 copies.

While it underscored challenges, Baim saw reason for hope in the report. “The fact that these outlets are not yet getting diversified funding is an opportunity,” she said. “With resources there are opportunities to scale to a better place and focus on marginalized coverage.”

The project was a collaboration between Local Media Foundation; News Is Out, a national collaborative of local queer news publishers; and the Center for Community Media at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.