On Screen: Creating 'Gay Fairfax' and TV for the Gay Community

Presented at the D.C. Historical Studies Conference, 27 Oct 2006.

"Finding Its Voice: Washington, DC’s GLBTQ Community Creates Its own Media"
As it emerged, Washington’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer community lacked media for reaching out to community members and for chronicling the community’s development. Jennifer King discusses the history of The Washington Blade, begun in October 1969 as The Gay Blade. Mark Meinke covers the nine-year run of Friends Radio, which chronicled the life and development of the community from 1973 to 1982 through interviews, investigative reports, and live reporting. John Olinger relates the development in the 1980s of the first TV programs that catered to the GLBTQ community.

This paper was presented at a panel discussion titled "Finding Its Voice: Washington, DC’s GLBTQ Community Creates Its own Media" moderated by Kenneth Jost, National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association, at the 2006 Annual Conference on D.C. Historical Studies.