Queer media pioneer Tracy Baim maps a survival plan for LGBTQ+ press

Over 70% of journalism jobs have been lost, and that collapse has gutted the ranks of LGBTQ+ journalists in the United States, according to Tracy Baim, co-founder of Chicago's Windy City Times and co-editor of the book "Gay Press, Gay Power."

In an interview with LGBTQ Nation, Baim argued that queer media faces a convergence of threats: shrinking advertising, political blowback against transgender coverage and DEI, platform dependence, and uncompensated AI scraping. She also laid out a revenue blueprint she says is the only viable path forward.

Why are queer outlets shrinking?

"The local LGBTQ media have absolutely suffered a huge decline in parallel to the decline of advertising in the mainstream," Baim told LGBTQ Nation. "The number of outlets certainly overall, across the last 30 years, has declined," she said, because most LGBTQ+ publications depend on ads, and advertisers are spending less in queer media.

She traced the recent pullback to two forces: economic uncertainty driven by the president's tariffs and the war in Iran, and political blowback against supporting transgender people and DEI initiatives.

Baim started in the field in 1984. She noted that NLGJA (The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists) was at the height of its power in the 1990s but has waned as journalism jobs disappeared, leaving fewer LGBTQ+ journalists working today than 30 years ago. She expressed little hope for national mainstream media, which she said has been co-opted and is now owned by a handful of people, though she acknowledged The New York Times remains independent with "their own compromising history."

Her optimism rests on distributed media: social platforms, independent newsletters and websites that did not exist when she entered the profession. "It makes everybody a producer," she said. Independent journalists now operate "like itinerant musicians" who get the word out and survive however they can.

What about platforms and AI?

Baim convened two summits with creators in Chicago in the past year to broker collaborations between independent media and creators. Creators bring audiences; outlets bring legitimacy and new audiences. Such partnerships could even attract advertising sponsors. "Not being singularly reliant on any distribution channel is key," she said, citing Meta's throttling of Instagram accounts during the recent No Kings protests.

On artificial intelligence, she is blunt: "ChatGPT, Claude, all these places are stealing without compensation and creating a horrible, horrible downward spiral of audience for all of the original creators out there, including LGBTQ+ media, including The New York Times." Her own sites and books have been scraped, she said, and even correct attribution would not help audience growth. She also warned that people in journalism are taking significant money from AI companies, raising concerns about compromise.

What is the revenue blueprint?

Baim works with Press Forward, a national network dedicated to revitalizing local news. She pointed to the California Journalism Support Act, signed by Governor Newsom on September 30, which provides $200 million over five years in tax credits for reporters and scholarships, as a model for government support that preserves editorial independence. She called for tech companies to pay into pooled funds and for government taxes on them to fund independent, fact-based media.

Her prescription is a multi-pronged revenue mix:

• government tax credits and subsidies delivered through independent channels with no content control;
• individual donors and subscriptions;
• foundation support;
• partnerships with creators;
• advertising, retained but no longer dominant.

She cited Block Club Chicago, a digital-only general-interest outlet with tens of thousands of monthly paying readers, as proof that subscription models can work. "There's not a single point of failure in the future" under such a model, she said.

Has diversity coverage improved?

Baim said queer outlets have done a much better job in the last decade of reflecting community diversity, largely because they have hired more diverse staff and freelancers. She cited the News is Out collaborative run by the Local Media Association, which includes 17 outlets, plus the Trans Journalists Association, Imara Jones's Trans Lash Media, and independent Black gay press.

The constraint is capacity. Under-resourced local outlets focus on big-picture stories such as legislation, judicial rulings and major community organizations, and often cannot cover the most marginalized parts of their community.

What about political persecution?

Baim said there is potential for parents of trans kids to be arrested, and noted that journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in Minnesota have been arrested. She predicted the administration will struggle to prosecute at scale and expects massive backlash. Unlike the 1980s, she said, LGBTQ+ people are now embedded in the leadership of broader resistance movements.

She reserved her sharpest criticism for internal divisions: "It frustrates me more than anything when we have internal firing squads, where people want to cut off our trans brothers and sisters. It's insane."

Will the pendulum swing back?

Even if anti-DEI sentiment reverses, Baim said advertising revenue is unlikely to return significantly, because agencies have lost the muscle for local media buying. Marketing and foundation staff will need retraining to bring innovation and sustainability to local news.

There are roughly 50 Press Forward chapters, and Baim sees an opening for LGBTQ+ media to plug into that infrastructure, including shared backend services. Windy City Times already uses the Local Media Foundation as its fiscal agent, as does The Dallas Voice. Philadelphia Gay News received a $40,000 grant from the Lenfest Institute to cover elections. A recent Medill study, she noted, documented another steep decline of local media in smaller communities as chains shut less profitable titles.

Grants for local LGBTQ+ media are starting to open up, including to for-profit outlets, provided the work is nonpartisan. Baim's bottom line: the old single-channel ad model is dead, and only a diversified revenue stack gives queer media a durable future.