A magazine that started in 1987 as 45 xeroxed copies in San Francisco is back on newsstands this month — and the reason why should get every LGBTQ+ marketer’s attention. BEAR Magazine relaunched in September as a quarterly 100+ page glossy under publisher Richard Jones, founder of Bear World Magazine, who put it plainly: the goal is to “own our own media… in our own way that cannot be ad blocked, that cannot be deleted, that cannot be removed.” That’s three of the biggest structural problems in LGBTQ+ digital advertising named in a single sentence. Real photographers, no AI imagery, revived personal ads, mailed discreetly worldwide. When platform reach is unreliable, community-owned media stops being the sentimental choice and starts being the durable one. Read our full take on what this reopens for advertisers.
A magazine that started in 1987 as 45 xeroxed copies in San Francisco is back on newsstands this month. That’s a nice story on its own. But the reason BEAR Magazine is returning — and the way its publisher talks about why — is the part worth reading closely if you buy, plan or place LGBTQ+ media.
The title relaunched in September 2026 as a quarterly, 100-plus-page glossy under publisher Richard Jones, who founded Bear World Magazine and acquired the BEAR brand in 2024. Print, personal ads, erotic photography, community features, mailed worldwide in discreet packaging. In 2026.
A Quick History, Because the Arc Matters
BEAR was founded in 1987 by Richard Bulger and photographer Chris Nelson — a self-copied zine dedicated to the appreciation of bears, made because mainstream gay media at the time had essentially no interest in stocky, hairy, masculine men. It grew into Brush Creek Media, operating out of a converted San Francisco firehouse and later a South of Market space near the Lone Star Saloon.
The original run ended in 2002 after issue #64, when the IRS seized the company’s inventory. The trademark changed hands, a revival ran from 2008 into the early 2010s, the title eventually moved online, and then it went quiet. For most of the last decade, BEAR existed mainly as back issues and archive collections.
That’s roughly the same arc a lot of LGBTQ+ print took: founded because nobody else would cover us, scaled up, then squeezed out by the web, then folded into platforms.
The Line That Should Stop Every Marketer
Here’s how Jones framed the relaunch to Press Pass Q:
“Own our own media, let’s present our community for and by the community in our own way that can not be ad blocked, that cannot be deleted, that cannot be removed.”
Read that again as a media-planning statement rather than a mission statement.
Cannot be ad blocked. Cannot be deleted. Cannot be removed. Those are three of the biggest structural problems in LGBTQ+ digital advertising right now, and he named all three in one sentence.
We’ve watched this play out for years. Queer content gets throttled by algorithms that can’t distinguish community from adult. Accounts get suspended over posts that would pass without comment on a straight brand’s feed. Whole categories of LGBTQ+ advertising get flagged as sensitive and priced or blocked accordingly. And on top of all that, a meaningful share of the audience is running an ad blocker anyway.
A printed page has none of those failure modes. It arrives, it sits on a coffee table, and it stays there for three months until the next issue shows up.
What’s Actually in Issue One
This isn’t a nostalgia reprint. The first issue is built like a working magazine:
- Cover feature on Jason Morris, photographed by Mack Sturgis
- Photography from John Orbit, Jeremiah Damian and Tristan Sutphin
- A fashion shoot by Catalin Stelian featuring Devious Saint
- Erotic fiction set at P-town Bear Week by Zach Zane, illustrated by Justin T. Russo
- “Daddy Knows Best,” an advice column from Cody Daigle-Orians
- Features on Syluss Fortay, Maxwell Christen and Bear Pad
- A history piece from Les K. Wright, plus a music column from Bryce Quartz
- Personal ads — revived and redesigned for the current era
Jones has been generous about the credit: “I am just a conductor of an orchestra of very very talented people.” That’s a roster of working LGBTQ+ photographers, writers and illustrators getting paid to make community media — which is its own argument for the model.
Three Details Worth Noting
The no-AI policy. BEAR is using no AI photography, and Jones has said the magazine discourages its advertisers from using it as well. In a year when nearly every brand is quietly running generated imagery, a title staking out “real people, real photographers” is making a positioning claim that a certain audience will notice immediately — and that advertisers can borrow simply by appearing there.
The fulfillment is part of the product. Issues are hand-fulfilled by a bear-owned shipping business and arrive in blacked-out packaging, shipping to countries where it’s legally permitted — the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and about a dozen others. Discretion isn’t a footnote in this category; for a lot of readers it’s the whole reason a mailed magazine works where a browser tab doesn’t.
It’s built around events, not just newsstands. The team is showing up as vendors at Urban Bear NYC this September, International Bear Convergence in February 2027, Texas Bear Round Up, with Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas in the plan — and Key West Bear Weekend pass holders received the launch edition. That’s print, retail and in-person built as one channel rather than three.
The Marketing Read
Jones told Dallas Voice: “It’s truly an honor to be the latest custodian of this iconic brand. We’re at a point where everything is digital, and I think people are craving something physical again.”
He’s not wrong about the broader trend — vinyl, film cameras, printed books, zines. But there’s something more specific happening for LGBTQ+ media, and it’s worth naming plainly. When platform reach is unreliable and corporate support is uneven, community-owned media stops being the sentimental option and starts being the durable one. A magazine you paid for and had mailed to you can’t be demonetized, deprioritized or quietly rolled back in a policy update.
For brands, this reopens a lane a lot of media plans stopped considering a decade ago. A quarterly with a defined, passionate, geographically distributed audience — reaching people at home, at events and in the handful of retail stores that still carry LGBTQ+ print — is a genuinely different kind of touchpoint than another line item in a programmatic buy. Smaller numbers, yes. Far more attention per impression, and none of the delivery risk.
The bear community has always been a strong example of this: highly organized, event-driven, loyal to the businesses that show up for it, and consistently underserved by brands that treat “LGBTQ+” as one undifferentiated audience. That’s precisely the kind of specificity that makes a media buy work.
Where We Land
We spend a lot of time talking about how to reach the LGBTQ+ community across social, search, mobile and email — and that work matters. But the healthiest version of this ecosystem is one where our own publishers, photographers and writers own the platforms too, and where brands treat supporting that infrastructure as part of the plan rather than a favor.
A magazine founded in 1987 coming back in 2026, on purpose, with a clear-eyed argument about ad blocking and platform risk, is a good sign. It’s worth supporting — as a reader, and as an advertiser.
You can find the magazine and subscribe at thebearmag.com.
If you’re thinking through where LGBTQ+ print and community-owned media fit into a 2026 or 2027 plan, that’s a conversation we’d welcome. You can always find us at PinkMedia.LGBT.
Authentic LGBTQ+ engagement, 24/7, 365 days a year — that’s what Pink Media is built for.
Sources: Press Pass Q · Bear World Magazine · Dallas Voice · BEAR Magazine · Wikipedia: Bear Magazine
