STAR Interview with Josh Gamson 10/10/2003

Abstract

JG: Because they're both different. The colloquium talk is sort of the beginning of a project I've been working on for, I guess, a year and a half now—it's taking me a long time to get the data analyzed—that was sparked by, I think it was sparked by an e mail that I'll quote to you guys in the colloquium, written by an activist, by a guy who used to be publisher of OUT magazine, about the specter of monopoly in gay and lesbian press. And it sounded just like the things people were saying when AOL and Time Warner merged. You know, every time there is a big merg er, there is the specter of monopoly from left-wing media critics. And I can identify with that side of media criticism, but I thought that was just kind of weird for a couple of reasons. First of all, the idea that gay and lesbian culture was developed enough that we could have our own media giant was funny—I'm used to just the little bar newspapers. So whereas, on the one hand this is a weird, hopeful sign—almost a backward hopeful sign—that we