Local LGBTQ+ Media Giving Day, Thursday, October 8, 2026, a national day of giving for local LGBTQ+ newsrooms.

Queer newsrooms are being bought, stripped, and shut down. We’re still here.

October 6, 2026/in Community/by Missy Spears

In February, equalpride laid off top editors across The Advocate, Out and Pride.com. Days later, the same company bought Them from Condé Nast. By April it had cut Them’s contributors too, leaving a publication that spent most of a decade covering trans life without a full-time staff writer.

That isn’t one company having a bad year. It’s what this field looks like right now. Queer outlets are being consolidated, stripped for parts, or quietly wound down at the exact moment our communities are the subject of more legislation and more manufactured controversy than at any point I can remember.

Kentucky isn’t insulated from it. In September, the Lexington Herald-Leader lost 12 reporters and an editor, and the paper’s eastern Kentucky beat went with them. Six Kentucky counties have no news source at all, and 88 have only one, according to Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. None of that is good news for us. A thinner press here doesn’t make Queer Kentucky stronger, it makes the state quieter.

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So here’s where that leaves us. We built this newsroom because mainstream outlets overlooked queer Kentuckians, got our stories wrong, or treated our lives as a debate. All of that is still true. What’s also true is that we aren’t only reporting for queer people anymore. As the papers around us thin out, we’re one of the few left paying attention to a lot of this state. That isn’t a role we asked for, and it’s bigger than we are.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, we’re asking for help alongside newsrooms carrying the same weight.

Queer Kentucky is taking part in Local LGBTQ+ Media Giving Day, a national day of giving for local queer media, organized through News is Out with the Local Media Foundation. The money goes into one pot and is divided among the participating newsrooms. You don’t have to pick a favorite. The campaign opens with $5,000 in matching funds from the Bob Ross Foundation, so gifts on Thursday stretch further than what you give.

This year the organizers expanded the day to bring in more newsrooms, and Kentucky is on the list. Eighteen of us are in it together: legacy papers like the Washington Blade and the Bay Area Reporter that have been publishing for decades, statewide nonprofits like LOOKOUT in Arizona and The Buckeye Flame, and radio and podcast shops like E3 Radio and The Gaily Show that prove this field was never only print. Every one of them is linked at the bottom of this story.

Those are the outlets we read. Being asked into this room says Kentucky counts in the national picture of queer media and we are proud to be included in this group.

Three ways to show up Thursday

Give. One gift, divided across every participating newsroom, and stretched by $5,000 in matching funds while they last: givebutter.com/LGBTQMediaGivingDay2026

Subscribe. If money is tight, your attention still counts. Sign up for our newsletter.

Share this. Most people have never heard of a giving day for queer media.

And go read the others. Pick one you’ve never read and subscribe to them instead of us. We mean it.

Bay Area Reporter · The Buckeye Flame · Dallas Voice · E3 Radio · The Gaily Show · Los Angeles Blade · LOOKOUT · News is Out · OutSFL · Philadelphia Gay News · Pride Source / Between The Lines · QNotes Carolinas · Seattle Gay News · Tagg Magazine · Uncloseted Media · Washington Blade · Windy City Times