Gayness sells out
Congrats to Toronto's Rob Sands, who
has sold his tiny Canadian business, the
365gay.com online news service, to the bigshots of the mainstream media monster
Viacom, via its subsidiary, the queer American
Logo TV network.
Rob founded the site in 2000 and worked like a crazy man. I once had coffee in his home-slash-office and watched him methodically chain smoke and go online multiple times while we chatted. (He also, for a time, bought a biweekly column from me that I wrote for very little money, out of a belief in the import of the gay media.)
So again, congrats to Rob. As for the rest of us media consumers, well, I'm worried. I hope the Yanks won't dump 365gay.com's Canadian coverage, an important resource for us Canucks. Much of the copy came from the wires, certainly, but Rob dug it up and posted it immediately, providing an invaluable service.
Also sold to Logo: the terribly smart and fun
AfterEllen and
AfterElton.
The continuing loss of independence of the North American queer media brings with it some good -- more resources, for example -- and lots of potential bad. We shall see.