Winq and Mate Magazines Pair Up

As the above announcement on the web site of Mate magazine notes, two of the nicest gay lifestyle magazines you can imagine have paired up, and it just might be that the only downside is that instead of two separate good non-adult gay magazines, we now will have only one. Apparently with the current issues, Germany's Mate magazine and the Dutch Winq magazine have merged, with the unified publication to be called Mate but carrying the Winq design (see above).

In the United States, we get only a quarterly version of Winq, which is published monthly or bi-monthly (I wasn't certain which) in Holland. We also have received the English-language edition of the German Mate, which has also been quarterly. Now, presumably, we will be the happy recipients of an English-language edition of the combined Mate.

I  would like to make this pitch to the publishers of the new Mate: First, please improve your distribution in the United States. Both magazines could be hard to find here. Trust me. I live in San Francisco, so if a gay magazine should be easy to find, this is the city for it. But I know of only a few places that carried the former version of Mate, and maybe six places that carried Winq. And if you subscribed to the old Winq, you would pay about twice the price that you would have paid if you purchased it at the newsstand. This is a market that the new Mate could conquer, but it has to be better represented in the States.

Second, please make it monthly.

I'm a fan of both magazines. They have produced high-quality, beautifully designed magazines that, I think, put to shame American gay magazines. Let us hope that together they continue the best traditions of both publications and don't become a muddle.

The Dwindling Ranks of Gay Magazines

On a whim, I decided to update my blog's look at the state of gay magazines, which have been decimated in recent years. A combination of the brutal recession, the ability of the internet to undercut the print publications' market (especially for the adult titles), and some already weak publications has resulted in a steady decline in the ranks of publications targeting the gay audience.

But decimated doesn't do justice to the decline. The word comes from the ancient Romans, whose military commanders would punish mutinous or disastrously performing troops by killing one out of every 10 troops under their command (the deci- root comes from the Latin for ten). A brutal form of punishment, yes; but the rate of loss in the magazine market is likely much more than 10 percent.

Just checking out this list of gay magazines finds that of the 10 listed, five have ceased publication – six if you count The Advocate, which officially became a special section of sister mag Out. (One could quibble with my counting; there are additional surviving and dead magazines not listed, and Echelon, after all, is counted as having ceased publication, but it apparently is still alive as an online-only magazine. An online-only magazine is, to me, by definition an internet product. But such quibbles are what make life worth living, and a disagreement on that particular title doesn't appreciably alter the numbers calculation.)

I've long maintained on this blog – and still do – that print has a healthy future, if it does what print does best and lets the internet do what the 'net does best. I suspect that this market niche is kind of uniquely vulnerable to the internet. That part of the magazines' coverage that was about building community and interaction is exactly what the internet does better than print. And those magazines that offered little or nothing more than adult content have obviously lost their reason for living, in a world where the internet makes videos and pictures of any- and everything ubiquitous and often free.

Hope springs eternal, however. Playgirl (the ostensibly female-oriented but gay-friendly skin publication) is back and is trying to buck the trend, though not well, if you ask me. And on the non-adult side, we'll see how relatively new titles such as the wonderful Winq from the Netherlands fares.

UPDATE 3/27/11: Winq and Mate magazines team up.

Malawi Gay Couple Pardoned, After Assistance from Ban Ki-Moon

The New York Times is reporting that the couple in Malawi that was sentenced to 14 years in prison after they celebrated their engagement has been unconditionally pardoned. Malawi's president, in announcing his order for their immediate release, nonetheless went out of his way to condemn the two people, saying they had gone against the country's laws, religion, blah blah blah, and that by releasing them, he wasn't supporting them.

What a mensch.

Really, the hero here is United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who asked that Malawi's leader to release his two citizens, and who will be making a speech to Malawi's legislature in which he will request that it change its laws discriminating against (I think persecuting is a proven alternative word that could be used here) homosexuals.

Now, someone can start a gay Malawi magazine ...

Mithly: A New Gay Magazine – Where Homosexuality Is Illegal

It's probably a little difficult to imagine here in the United States. Say you wanted to create a magazine for something that was illegal. Naturally, your mind goes to things that are prurient and disgusting. (Shame on you.) Because so much is legal here that is illegal in less advanced nations, right?

But what if it was simply illegal to love someone, to be intimate with them, and you wanted to make a magazine about that?

No, it's not Texas. It's Morocco. Britain's The Guardian reports on a new gay magazine in Morocco. Gays might be frowned upon there, but they've got a print presence. Mithly magazine is the newest publication there. It might supplant my previous prediction of the shortest-living magazine alive today, but I wish Mithly (and Gay: Good As You) long lives.

But both of their editor's might want to sleep with one eye open.

My Prediction for the Shortest-Living Magazine Today

In the backward former Soviet state of Belarus, some gay activists have just launched a gay magazine called, Gay: Good as You.

Now, Belarus isn't the Czech Republic or Eastern Germany. It's not even Russia or Poland. And the country has prevented the magazine from being registered, which means it can't print more than a couple hundred copies. (So you have to download a digital version here.)

Though the cover makes it look like the magazine's a skin publication, most of the pages are filled with text. I don't read Russian or whatever the language is, but I can tell text from photos, and text predominates.

You might as well download a copy now and read it, if you read Russian (or whatever it is). Because there's a high probability this publication won't last very long.

Wish them well.

Behind the Scenes of India's Gay Magazine

This report from Russia Today on the relaunch of Indian gay magazine Bombay Dost is a short behind-the-scenes look at a small magazine in a country where homosexuality has only recently become legal.

Front Magazine RIP?

I know, you don't understand the German language. But, if you read this report (hey, use Google Language Tools to translate it), you'll find out about the death of a short-lived German gay magazine, Front.

Front made some news when it had professional footballer (i.e., soccer player) and member of the German national team Philip Lahm on the cover. Inside, he said he thought any gay professional player coming out would have a difficult time and be at the center of a media circus, but that he wouldn't treat a gay team member any differently from his straight teammates.

Anyway, the mag is now kaputt. Auf wiedersehen.

Bombay Dost -- Will It Thrive in India Now that Homosexuality Is Legal?

With the recent decision by India's highest court that a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality was unconstitutional, one hopes (well, one hopes in the context of my magazine-centric blog) that Indian gay magazines such as Bombay Dost will find a place to thrive.

Bombay Dost apparently has about 1,000 copies in circulation, no doubt kept down in numbers by the need to distribute through roadside stands and be wrapped in brown paper. (This is in fact a rebirth of Bombay Dost; its previous incarnation ceased publication in 2002 due to a lack of advertising and financing.)

BTW, in the Spring 2009 issue of Winq, there was a feature profile of an openly gay Indian prince.

Got It

Okay, I finally found it.