Today NLGJA – The Association of LGBTQ Journalists is pleased to announce that two new inductees will be enrolled in the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame on September 9 at the association’s annual National Convention. This year’s honorees will be Jinx Beers and Dan Savage.
Leroy Aarons founded NLGJA in 1990, pioneering a watershed movement in journalism and newsrooms throughout the nation. Following his death in 2005, the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame was launched to set apart remarkable individuals like Aarons and to tell their stories.
Until this year, the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame has honored 36 individuals and continues to endure. These are individuals, living and deceased, who have left a lasting mark on the profession – through their own courage, by blazing trails and above all, through their masterful dedication to the practice of journalism.
In 2017, NLGJA honors these outstanding, new Hall of Fame inductees:
Jinx Beers is the founding publisher and first managing editor of America’s longest running lesbian newspaper, The Lesbian News, launched in 1975. She is a pioneering journalist as well as a lifelong feminist and advocate for human rights. Beers proudly served in the U.S. Air Force and the active reserves. In civilian life, she held a range of public service roles for state and local governments – while nurturing The Lesbian News for its first thirteen and a half years. The recipient of many honors and awards, for her selfless dedication to the LGBTQ community, and to mark the first 75 years of her activism, she penned her autobiography: “Memoirs of an Old Dyke.”
Dan Savage is an award-winning journalist and author, TV personality, and activist best known for his political and social commentary, as well as his honest approach to sex, love and relationships. His sex advice column, “Savage Love,” introduced over 25 years ago, is now syndicated throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. He is the Editorial Director of The Stranger, and his byline has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone, The Onion and on Salon.com.
Savage’s sex advice column, “Savage Love,” introduced over 25 years ago, is now syndicated in newspapers and websites throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He is the Editorial Director of The Stranger, Seattle’s weekly alternative newspaper. Savage is also the author of several books spurring Publishers’ Weekly to name him, “America’s most in-your-face sex columnist and gay rights activist.” In September 2010, Savage created a YouTube video with his husband Terry Miller to inspire hope for LGBT young people facing harassment and especially to let LGBT youth know that “it gets better”. Today, the It Gets Better Project (www.itgetsbetter.org) has become a global movement, inspiring more than 50,000 It Gets Better videos viewed over 50 million times.
NLGJA is the leading professional organization for LGBTQ journalists with 24 chapters nationwide, as well as members around the world. Inductees will be honored at this year’s National Convention to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 7-10, 2017. More information is available at: www.nlgja.org/2017.
See www.nlgja.org/awards/nlgja-hall-of-fame/ to learn more about these celebrated individuals like Roy Aarons, Sarah Pettit, Ina Fried, LZ Granderson, “Lisa Ben,” Armistead Maupin and others who have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
About NLGJA – The Association of LGBTQ Journalists
NLGJA is an organization of journalists, news executives, media professionals, educators and students working from within the news industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of LGBTQ issues. NLGJA opposes all forms of workplace bias and provides professional development to its members. For more information, visit www.nlgja.org.