Editorial
Editorial:
What a Long, Strange, Difficult, Rewarding Trip It's Been
With this issue, Out in the Mountains begins its 17th year of publication and I complete my first year as editor. It’s been a long journey for the paper, placing us among a rare few GLBTQ publications who have managed to survive discrimination, increasing printing and production costs, the ebbing (and thankfully, the rising) of community involvement to continue to document, celebrate, validate, comfort, and express the lives of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transfolk, and queers.
That we continue to do it in a small rural state without the clusters of gay-centered bars, gyms, commercial party sites whose full-page ads support (and pad) the pages of larger papers is nothing short of amazing!
I looked back through our archive this month, and talked to, emailed and phoned as many former editors as I could reach for a little perspective on our communities’ history in print as they experienced it.
Howdy Russell, of Hinesburg, was involved from the first moment. “I remember us sitting down – Vermonters for Lesbian and Gay Rights, that is – to write a grant to the Haymarket Foundation in David Ryan’s apartment in Burlington and trying to figure out what we were going to write the grant for. The idea of a vehicle for communication seemed like the best idea.”
In the earliest days, there was no designated editor. “There was a group of us getting articles together,” Howdy recalls. In the first 5 years, listing the names of the people involved in the paper was an issue: the group did not want to give credit only to the ones who were “out” or in “safe” jobs, while others doing equally important work for the paper could not have their names listed for fear of losing a job, a housing situation, or even custody of a child.
What was most difficult was the chaos and uncertainty: “People would make commitments for articles and then it wouldn’t show up. It was the most challenging thing – well, along with finances.”
When the paper was in danger of folding in late 1989, Hugh Coyle was among a collection of community members who responded to a call for help, and he became the first designated editor in June of 1990. This stint lasted a year, as a job took him out of state.
“My fondest OITM memory is also my first,” he writes, “the night when dozens of interested folks gathered at the Burlington public library to save the newspaper from disappearing. I was there with some friends from Middlebury, where we had just launched a small group for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. OITM became something of a central focus for us. It gave our group a sense of purpose and prepared us well for the political road ahead.”
Hugh had a second stint as editor from April of 1996 to May of 1997:
“From the first ‘editorial meeting’ (when the departing editors threw the keys to the OITM office into the room and shouted ‘Good luck!’) to the debut of our spiffy new OITM T-shirts on a soaking-wet Pride Day, from the numerous (and joyous) anniversary and holiday parties with the staff to a nearly fatal accident on a wintry day while driving pages off to the printers, my time with OITM produced some of the most memorable moments of my life. It taught me the true meaning of pride and community service, and how wonderfully the two work together.”
Deb Lashman, now an attorney with Schoenberg & Associates in Burlington, was the editor for three of the years (1991-1994) between Hugh Coyle’s two terms before heading off to law school.
The most difficult issue she remembers was “dealing with the issue of NAMBLA [the North American Man-Boy Love Association] wanting to place an ad in the classifieds. There were heated differences that were certainly brought to the forefront: were we a newspaper or something else? I came down on the side of our being a newspaper.” The whole issue promoted discussion and loud passions, Deb says, and the ad went in afterward.
One of the most awkward issues came up when “I was in the position of having to report on my own case,” she recalls. Deb and her partner had petitioned for her right to adopt her partner’s biological son as the “second parent.” The probate judge denied the petition, and the case went to the state Supreme Court, which handed down a decision in June 1993. Lashman concludes, “I have fond memories of editing the paper with my son (now 11) in my lap in the wee hours of the morning.”
Fred Kuhr took over from Deb Lashman and stayed on from 1994 to 1996.
“One of the controversies that I will never forget during my time as editor was the issue that prompted more letters to the editor than any other. Was it about gays in the military, anti-discrimination laws, or same-sex marriage? Nope. It was about how much readers love their ÎDykes To Watch Out For,’” Fred writes. He’s now an editor at the Boston-based In Newsweekly.
“I printed a letter to the editor from a Rutland area church leader whose church distributed Out In The Mountains in its entryway. This reader questioned what she saw as the raciness of some of Alison Bechdel’s cartoons and wondered if printing such explicit scenes as lesbians engaged in oral sex was counterproductive to the community’s outreach to straight allies.
“The result was an onslaught from readers – both male and female – who went so far as to argue that OITM should never have published the original letter in the first place. The lesson: It’s called ÎDykes To Watch Out For’ for a reason.”
With some fill-in help from Deb Lashman, the paper took on a new editor (or is it the other way around?) – Chris Moes – in July 1997. He ran the paper until October 1998: “I remember seeing rain through my windshield and just feeling so sick of it, it was in May I think and I was doing a great deal of driving and it seemed to rain everyday. OITM was, among a hundred other things, an opportunity to explore the state, and discover the incredible places and people, from Jeffersonville Falls and that great little bookstore in Lyndonville to Curtis Barbeque in Putney and the Clothes Barn in St. Albans.
“I took it on as a mission to increase the distribution of the newspaper by delivering it personally and talking to people in all of the small towns and cities of the state,” he recalls in an email from Germany. “I tripled the number of drop-off sites while meeting an amazing array of people through out the state. I was always amazed at the pockets of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people from a multitude of backgrounds, who make up the diasporic community the paper sought to serve. I was always struck by the desire to create and build community of the people I met.”
Barb Dozetos was on the Board of Directors and volunteered as a copyeditor for OITM before she was prevailed upon to become editor beginning with the November 1998 issue. It was, as she remembers, a “very exciting time.”
“Because of my position at the paper, I got a front row seat for the birth of civil unions. The most thrilling moment for me was sitting – literally – in the front row of the Supreme Court for the oral arguments in Baker v. Vermont. I knew then that I was watching history being made. Among the many gifts my tenure as editor brought, what I’ll cherish the most is the opportunity to know personally people I’ll always look to as my personal heroes: Bill Lippert, Susan Murray, and Beth Robinson.”
When Barb Dozetos left in December of 2000 (she is now a freelance journalist and national secretary for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association), the ruling had been issued, civil union legislation had been passed, and one of the least civil, most vicious state election campaigns in Vermont’s history resulted in a House determined to repeal or eviscerate the law recognizing gay and lesbian relationships, held in check by a Senate with a precariously slim pro-civil union majority.
Jason Whipple followed Barb Dozetos in the editor’s chair, taking on his first post-graduation professional job. Whipple, now a teacher in Brattleboro, saw the paper through 2001, the first backlash year.
“I agreed to take this job because I wanted to feel like I was part of a community,” he wrote in his farewell editorial in the March issue of OITM. “I was certain that my experience as the editor of a community paper would grant me automatic access to a family that I desperately needed. Unfortunately, this did not happen. I have really only found a handful of individuals with whom I could connect. This trip has been worth that alone.”
My year began with confidence tinged with panic (“I know I can do this, but how?”), and has for the most part been rewarding. The feedback about OITM’s coverage of our communities has been overwhelmingly positive, not only in direct comments and letters, but in the number of people willing to trust us with their stories, their opinions, their hard times and glad times. Without you – readers, writers, artists, organizations, advertisers, volunteers, board and committee members, drivers, stuffers, web gurus, fundraisers, donors, distribution sites – we could not exist. As I wrote to each of the former editors: We stand on your shoulders!
Euan Bear