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Outlet profile

Washington Blade

U.S. left / LGBTQ advocacy

Owned byBrown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc. — an independent company formed by publisher Lynne Brown, editor Kevin Naff, sales executive Brian Pitts, and other former staff members
FundingAdvertising, subscriptions, and supplemental support from the affiliated Blade Foundation, a nonprofit that funds enterprise journalism and archival projects
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Washington Blade was founded in October 1969 — months after the Stonewall uprising — as a one-sheet newsletter called The Gay Blade, distributed in D.C. bars by members of the Mattachine Society, with founding contributors including Lilli Vincenz and Nancy Tucker. Over the following decades it grew into a full weekly newspaper, becoming the oldest LGBTQ publication in the country and one of the largest by circulation, and eventually earned a seat in the White House Press Corps — the only LGBTQ outlet with that credential. In 2009 its then-parent company, Window Media, filed for bankruptcy and abruptly closed the paper. Former staffers Lynne Brown, Kevin Naff, and Brian Pitts formed Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, purchased the Blade's assets from bankruptcy court in early 2010, and relaunched the publication that April. The company also publishes the Los Angeles Blade and established the nonprofit Blade Foundation to fund journalism and digitize the paper's decades-long archive. Throughout its history the Blade has covered every major development in LGBTQ civil rights — from the AIDS crisis to same-sex marriage — from a perspective aligned with the community's interests rather than a studied neutrality. Coverage of the second Trump administration has been consistently critical: the paper reported on Trump's first-week executive orders as a 'flurry of anti-LGBTQ executive actions' and published a retrospective one year in titled 'A full year of Trump and LGBTQ rights: all that's been lost.'

Sources

  1. Washington Blade — Wikipedia
  2. About The Washington Blade
  3. Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia purchases Washington Blade assets
  4. From Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to trans controversy, The Washington Blade has covered LGBTQ issues for 50 years — Poynter
  5. Lynne Brown, Publisher of the Washington Blade, Reflects on 50 Years of LGBTQ Journalism — Forbes
  6. Trump's first week in office sees flurry of anti-LGBTQ executive actions — Washington Blade
  7. A full year of Trump and LGBTQ rights: all that's been lost — Washington Blade
  8. Washington Blade — Bias and Credibility, Media Bias/Fact Check
  9. The Blade Foundation

Profile compiled 2026-07-26; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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