IN Newsweekly Continues to Struggle

With my health finally back to normal after nearly a week of fighting a particularly virulent stomach flu, this blogger can finally return to providing regular commentary and writing. One thing that apparently continues rather unabated is IN Newsweekly's troubles.

Sources in Boston told Boy in Bushwick in a number of e-mails over the last several days three sales representatives have left the troubled weekly since HX Media CEO Matthew Bank fired associate publisher Bill Berggren earlier this month. Ad sales remain precariously low while former Washington Blade publisher Jake Spencer has taken over the newspaper's day-to-day operations. And former columnist Chuck Colbert maintains Bank still owes him more than $2,000.

Friends and contacts in Boston have also confirmed IN Newsweekly's ever-shrinking page count (and reputation) in conversations over the last couple of weeks. And I even saw it for myself in the South End during Christmas. The lessons from this continued downfall remain painfully obvious for the broader LGBT media genre -- respect and timely pay for contributing writers and the need for publishers to consider demographic and geographic factors before entering into a new market. Hopefully other LGBT publications and publishers will heed the lessons HX Media has apparently failed to learn...