The Desert Sun , the daily newspaper of Palm Springs, owned by the Gannett media company, which includes USA Today, launched an LGBT monthly magazine on Sunday, becoming the first mainstream newspaper to target the LGBT community with a monthly magazine. Desert Outlook will, according to its mission statement, celebrate the people who help “define southern California, our world and the future by living proudly and openly.”
The inaugural issue includes an in-depth interview with Senator Dianne Feinstein, about the California Democrat taking the lead in the Senate to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, by award-winning retired gay journalist Hank Plante, who is also a columnist at the Sun.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time that a mainstream newspaper has put out an LGBT magazine and this is groundbreaking,” Plante told the Sun. “I'm really proud that The Desert Sun and Gannett would get behind this. I think they're betting on the future.”
Plante is a history-maker himself, one of the first openly gay broadcast journalists in the country, known for groundbreaking reporting on AIDS for KPIX in San Francisco in the 1980s. In June, Plante will be honored by the Associated Press, accepting the 2012 Stan Chambers Award for Extraordinary Achievement from the Associated Press Television and Radio Association.
Our friends at Towleroad report that the AP made it's decision based on this news reel: