17 Facts About Washington Blade

Washington Blade is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area.

The Washington Blade is the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States and third largest by circulation, behind the Philadelphia Gay News and the Gay City News of New York City.

The Washington Blade is often referred to as America's gay newspaper of record because it chronicled LGBT news locally, nationally, and internationally.

The ownership group of the Agenda consisted of many former staff members of the Washington Blade, who purchased the trademark and paper archives out of bankruptcy court.

The Washington Blade was originally published as a single page and distributed hand-to-hand in a variety of gay bars throughout the city.

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Afraid of a backlash over the publication, many of the initial authors of writings in the Washington Blade used pen names during the early years of publishing.

In June 1972, the Gay Washington Blade published its first multi-page edition which consisted of four pages and in April 1973, the paper expanded to eight pages and was printed on legal sized paper sheets, stapled in the middle and folded.

The Gay Washington Blade began to focus less on being a newsletter used to organize the community and more of a newspaper for the community.

The June 1975 edition of the Washington Blade dropped the word 'Gay' from the title of the publication after it was discovered that a newspaper in New York City held the rights to the name Gay Washington Blade.

In July 1981, the Washington Blade ran a front-page story entitled "Rare, Fatal Pneumonia Hits Gay Men, " making the paper one of the first gay newspapers in the country to write about the disease that has come to be known as AIDS.

Washington Blade started publishing weekly in January 1983 and coverage shifted to the AIDS crisis and news about this newly emerging disease.

The paper expanded into new markets and mediums with the 1995 launch of the online version of the Washington Blade, followed two years later with the launching of a sister publication in New York, called the New York Washington Blade.

Shortly after the sale of the paper, staff at the Blade sought a vote to unionize with the help of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.

Employees at the Washington Blade were aware of Window Media's financial troubles, but the timing and total closure of the publication came as a shock to the entire staff.

Kevin Naff, editor of the Washington Blade, said employees "found out when two of the corporate officers were waiting for us when we got to work this morning".

In 1995, the Washington Blade won a Silver Gavel award from the American Bar Association for a four-part series of articles entitled "Legal Challenges to Anti-Gay Initiatives" which explored the legal consequences of anti-gay ballot initiatives and the constitutional challenges to them.

Washington Blade's pieces included criticism of gay blogger John Aravosis, who had helped uncover Gannon's pornographic ads.