Blade Rises from the Ashes

[The Philosopher]

from the Wall Street Journal

The gay community’s largest free newspaper is set to relaunch Friday, a year and a half after employees rescued it from bankruptcy.

The Washington Blade, which has covered gay-related news out of Washington, D.C., for more than four decades, briefly shuttered in November 2009 when then-owner Window Media LLC filed for Chapter 7 liquidation. About a dozen employees immediately banded together to continue publishing the paper, without pay, under a new name, DC Agenda.

“They threw us out on a Monday and that Friday we printed,” says Lynne Brown, the Blade’s former publisher who stayed on board.

The owner of a local gym provided the paper’s staff with temporary office space. “If you wanted to sit down, you had to sit on a yoga ball,” says Brown. “We didn’t have furniture.”

To fund the operation, the paper’s volunteer staff launched SavetheBlade.com, a website requesting donations via a Paypal account. Within a month, they received more than $10,000 in contributions.

“I had readers in Turkey email me and say ‘how can we help,’ ” recalls Kevin Naff, the Blade’s editor-in-chief who turned volunteer worker.

http://blogs.wsj.com/in-charge/2011/04/26/blade-rises-from-the-ashes/">Click Here To Read More

[xchrom]

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