Tracy Baim: Finding my niche early in the gay press

My first cover story in GayLife newspaper was June 14, 1984, less than a month out of journalism school.

“Gay Strike Force’ Subject Nabbed” was about the arrest of a man accused of planting 24 bombs in Chicago. 

I started in gay media because, as an open lesbian in 1984, there were very few opportunities in the mainstream media. There were gay people there, of course; they were just hiding a part of their lives.

The “homosexual” or “gay” press has provided needed coverage of the LGBTQ+ community for many decades. The first known gay publication, Friendship & Freedom, started in Chicago 99 years ago. It was shut down by the police. Since then, there have been newsletters, newspapers, magazines, radio shows, television programs and podcasts related to Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community.

Even as the mainstream press has gotten better, niche media has and always will serve as a way to have a deeper, authentic dive into communities. 

There is an important symbiotic relationship between the mainstream press and community media — covering LGBTQ+ and also the Black press and outlets serving Latinos, Asians, Polish, etc. The Chicago Sun-Times now does a great job in its diverse coverage — and many of its reporters, editors and photographers were trained in community media.

This complex media ecosystem is full of complementary media organizations. 

I’m from a Chicago journalism family. I had role models from mainstream media and alternative media. As a kid, I went to journalism picnics in the 1970s with esteemed journalists from legacy media.

But, by 1984, after graduating with a journalism degree and being a very out lesbian, I knew those places were not for me. There were many gay people working there, but none openly so, at least in Chicago. I was not going back into the closet for my career.

As a woman, my mom had found those places equally stifling and carved a path for herself in alternative ways. When she heard about a part-time job at GayLife newspaper, she encouraged me to apply.

The ironic thing was that I would end up covering the mainstream media, and protests against its coverage, as part of my job. It was a frustrating thing to document.

This was especially difficult as the impact of HIV/AIDS grew. The mainstream media often vilified or ignored its reach. Because they often got it wrong, the gay community would picket their buildings. There were meetings between gay activists and editorial boards. 

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Chicago gay community grew stronger and the devastation of AIDS was being covered more and better in mainstream media, the Sun-Times and Tribune added “gay beats” to the work of existing reporters (Tom Brune and Jean Latz Griffin, respectively). A lesbian, Terry Wilson, eventually took over the beat part-time from Griffin. Also from that era, Achy Obejas became the Tribune’s first openly gay writer.

I reported on this in my book about gay press history. Brune started at the Sun-Times during the days of Rupert Murdoch’s ownership, in the mid-1980s. He said there was a revolving door of editors, including one particularly homophobic one from Australia.

“He had a real problem with gays; he did offensive things, probably even stories offensive to gays and lesbians,” Brune said.

After a new editor came on, Brune said it appeared the paper was trying to build bridges with communities that had been offended. 

Howard Wolinsky covered AIDS for the Sun-Times, but the paper wanted someone to cover the disease more in-depth.

“The sub rosa issue was they wanted to show they weren’t a bigoted or homophobic paper,” Brune said. “I quickly surmised that you really can’t do a good job covering what’s going on with AIDS unless you get to know the gay community better. So I expanded the beat for more lesbian and gay issues.”

Brune spent about two years with the focus on AIDS and gay stories. Wolinsky stayed doing the AIDS beat.

“I think there was a fair amount of mainstreaming by that point,” he said. “In Chicago’s gay community, there was a model with helping reporters get the stories that really changed the coverage. It was just a smart awareness of the importance of getting it right in the mainstream media.”

As more reporters, editors and photographers came out of the closet, they also helped change the discourse. One group had a profound impact. In 1990, journalist and editor Roy Aarons launched what is now known as NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists. It helped journalists migrate out of the closet, and they helped create editorial standards for covering LGBTQ+ people. 

It’s much harder but not impossible to be homophobic, transphobic, sexist, racist, etc. when people from those communities are your colleagues. Those early journalism pioneers who came out, including Randy Shilts, paved the way for the openly queer journalists today, from Rachel Maddow and Robin Roberts to Anderson Cooper and WGN’s Sean Lewis.

But one openly LGBTQ journalist can’t change a newsroom. It takes strong leadership to create a better situation for staff and readers. It’s been a relatively short distance between the 1920s, when police shut down a gay newsletter, to the 1950s, when gays were called “perverts” in headlines, to the 1980s, when gays were blamed for AIDS, to now, when we in Chicago usually have a more educated approach to covering the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ community.

This is not a journey with an end. But we are much further along than when I started nearly 40 years ago. 

Tracy Baim is co-founder and owner of Windy City Times. Baim received the 2013 Chicago Headline Club Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, she was inducted into the NLGJA Hall of Fame. The Chicago Journalists Association gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. Baim has written or edited 13 books, including “Gay Press, Gay Power,” “Obama and the Gays” and “Out and Proud in Chicago.”