After seven years of having local papers do it, it now looks like Portland Pride will start doing it for themselves....This week Willamette Week printed a scathing article on a prominent local leader and one of the founders of the national gay rights movement the exact same week that Pride NW inserted the Official (LGBT) Pride Guide in Willamette Week. The Pride Board issued this statement on Sunday regarding the future of the guide and said placement of the guide (and all the advertising dollars that come with it): As of 2015, the Official Portland Pride Guide will be designed and produced directly by Pride Northwest. We have, for some time, been discussing and analyzing our needs and goals for the Pride Guide, and consistently, we recognize that, in order to fulfill those things, we need to have more direct control over the publication. We need a Guide that speaks most directly to the Portland Pride Waterfront Festival and Parade and to Pride Northwest as an organization, as well as one which is financially sustainable...one of our priorities as an organization (as it would be for any organization), is to ensure the credibility and proper representation of Pride Northwest. As a highly visible organization and event, we understand the importance of that to our community. In working with outside publishers to produce the Guide, we have been inadvertently impacted by issues external to Pride Northwest. While we have no desire to attempt to influence or undermine the freedom of the press-to restrict that in any way-we are obligated to act in the best interests of Pride Northwest. We have long been aware of the conflict between producing a Guide that best reflects us and the LGBT community, while working within the confines of external publishers, who have needs and priorities which may not align with ours. This has been a consistent issue. Recent events have served to reinforce our resolve to ensure that the Official Pride Guide is created in a way that best honors our community and best represents Pride Northwest, and that we can do so free of the influences of external pressures. In order to achieve that, we feel that it is our best interests to bring the Pride Guide back into the organization.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 02:27:19 +0000