Online Policy Group

by Rex Wockner, PlanetOut, November 23, 2000

... I was not concerned earlier this year when PlanetOut.com announced it was buying The Advocate, which itself had just bought Out magazine. There are well over 150 gay and lesbian publications in America, and the Advocate and Out are just two of them.

But now the two largest non-porn gay Web sites, PlanetOut and Gay.com, have merged. This may be worrisome to some readers, since PlanetOut and Gay.com are in a league of their own and have no realistic competition. Third in line, I suppose, might be GayWired.com.

From a personal perspective, it's all good. Next time Mike Signorile and I cooperate while covering the political conventions, it'll be for the same team instead of for competitors (shhh -- don't tell our editors). Since the gay journalism community is small, and most of us are friends, it's always nice not to be competing ruthlessly with your buds.

But apart from personal matters, competition is nearly always a good thing. Will PlanetOut and Gay.com still rush to break stories if they no longer need to beat each other? Will writers like Andrew Sullivan who manage to get blacklisted by The Advocate end up blacklisted by Out, PlanetOut, and Gay.com as well? Will this week's column be censored by PlanetOut, which is the column's home base, at which point I would no longer have the option of saying, "Fine, I'll just take my column and go to Gay.com then!"

Hopefully none of these problems will emerge. In theory, two media outlets owned by the same company can engage in healthy competition, as was the case for years with San Francisco's daily newspapers. Hopefully, Andrew Sullivan's spat with Advocate chief Judy Weider doesn't affect his relationship with PlanetOut chief Megan Smith. And I trust that PlanetOut/Gay.com are journalistically mature enough to let me say these things. I know PlanetOut let me trash the Millennium March on Washington repeatedly, even though they were its biggest sponsor. Signorile tells me Gay.com is equally mature.

But those of you looking in from the outside may well be uneasy. Now would be a good time for the new PlanetOut/Gay.com megacorp to publicly recommit itself to the absolute separation of their news divisions (of which this column is a part) from their corporate and P.R. offices and to promise the gay online world that the merger will not result in any reduction in diverse viewpoints.

[Ed. note: You can read PlanetOut's press release on the merger with
Gay.com here.]