Fort Worth Weekly’s Interaction With The Gay Community

Gay Fort Worth is forced to turn to Fort Worth Weekly for gay and lesbian news these days, but there’s very little in its pages to get excited about.

It’s hard to tell if this alternative newsweekly could be doing a better job with its coverage or if there is simply very little for them to say about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues in Fort Worth these days.

Fort Worth had a gay and lesbian newspaper for years, but it folded many, many years ago. Since then, the community has had no place to turn for announcements, news and a gay take on relevant issues.

Why Not The Star-Telegram?

Fort Worth’s daily newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, does an adequate job covering gay and lesbian issues when they are important enough to catch their attention.

But with recent layoffs and downsizing by the paper, no community in Fort Worth is being adequately covered.

The Star-Telegram is a middle-of-the-road paper that doesn’t like to rock the boat. It often favors wealthier citizens, too.

For those reasons and others, it’s not a dependable source of gay news.

What A Healthy Community Needs

A healthy gay and lesbian community benefits most from having a newspaper of its own that publishes announcements, reasonably priced ads and stories about interesting and important members of the community.

With that no longer available in Fort Worth, the nearest gay paper is the Dallas Voice. While it tries to cover Fort Worth issues and even has limited distribution in Fort Worth, it’s a Dallas paper. Gays and lesbians in Fort Worth often have an anti-Dallas bias, and no Dallas paper can ever feel completely welcome in Cowtown.

The Role of Fort Worth Weekly

While Fort Worth Weekly’s general tone and content quality varies, it has generally declined somewhat in recent years. Still, it serves an important purpose. It picks up stories the local daily paper misses or skips and it keeps the daily and local government officials accountable.

Fort Worth Weekly does more than that, however.

It covers bars, restaurants and entertainment news in Fort Worth, Tarrant County and the surrounding areas. In fact, restaurants and bars are where most of its free issues are distributed. You can also find it at Central Market.

While you won’t find many mentions of gay events, you won’t find any bias against them either.

Perhaps its most important service to the community is including at least a partial listing of gay bars in every issue. That helps newcomers and visitors find a way into Gay Fort Worth.

Doing The Best It Can

Fort Worth Weekly tries to serve a wide range of purposes, but with limited pages and limited staff, it can never completely serve any of them.

While the Weekly is far from a completist work, it makes a difference on the issues it tackles and it serves as the local entertainment and nightlife community’s document of record.

Fort Worth Weekly isn’t a perfect paper, and it doesn’t cover gay and lesbian issues very often. Still, it’s fun and interesting, and that’s why lots of people pick up a copy every week.

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