When I first moved to DC back in 1999, an older, wiser lesbian friend of mine gave me one piece of advice; pick up the Washington Blade. She said there’s nothing like it. It defines gay journalism like no other paper. That, I did and even as I grew a part from the mainstream of what many call modern gay “culture,” the Blade remained on my reading list.

Today, the Blade shut down, a victim of a larger companies’ downfall and the continual march towards what many say is the extinction of print journalism as we know it. Washington will never be same again.

To echo my friend Robert, it was a stalwart of not just the DC gay community, but the National gay community for over 40 years. We can only hope that this ending will signal a new beginning. We hear that there are people dedicated to re-inventing the paper and there is no better time or place than the turning of the calendar in the digital age.

There is much to tell and many more stories to write. Let’s hope that the Blade may be silent for now, but not for long.

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