Exactly 30 years ago, the first edition of Gay Community News was published. This year, GCN celebrates three decades of bringing the concerns and issues of the LGBT community to light, making it one of the oldest free papers in the world.
Sean O’Rourke was joined by Curator Tonie Walsh, Editor Brian Finnegan and Commercial Manager Lisa Connell to look at back the changing landscape of Ireland and of print media through the LGBT lens. Tonie described the "socially and economically hostile environment" in which the magazine first began publishing, in which even gay businesses were reluctant to advertise in the paper given the culture of criminality that existed.
"I had been working on a commercial gay magazine, Out Magazine, beforehand and that ran into difficulties. Even RTÉ refused to run a rather innocuous radio ad. People were reluctant to engage with the LGBT community, so setting up the newspaper was a really important part of that process of trying to chisel away at discriminatory attitudes."
From its first, modest 8-page edition on February 1988, @GCNmag grew rapidly due to progressive buy-in by readers and contributors. Its dynamic growth in pagination and variety of opinion is indicative of its central role as Ireland's queer community periodical. #GCN30 @nxfie pic.twitter.com/f8jxiqjfkD
— Tonie Walsh (@tonie_walsh) June 19, 2018
Lisa spoke about the fight the magazine had on its hands when the recession hit the print industry.
"When the crash happened in the mid 2000’s, we really hit a time of trouble and we asked the community to help us and they did, so we launched at that time a campaign called GCN Forever, and we were supported so overwhelmingly by the community that it just showed us that there still is a place in Ireland for this type of publication, and it’s very important."
Brian came on board around 15 years ago, when marriage equality had become the hot topic among the gay community.
"Civil partnership came on the path towards marriage, but the push towards equal marriage really was there from 2003. Interestingly, we did two issues for the Marriage Equality Referendum. Because we published on the Monday after the referendum, we did an issue for ‘no’ and an issue for ‘yes’ because we had to immediately respond."
A new exhibition, Proof: 30 Years of Gay Community News, runs at Dublin's Gallery Of Photography during this year's Dublin Pride celebrations - find out more here.
