by Joe Siegel

The Bay Area Reporter recently celebrated its milestone 55th birthday.

As part of the festivities, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie handed a proclamation to owner and publisher Michael Yamashita on the occasion of the LGBTQ newspaper’s anniversary.

The proclamation stated in part, “We join the staff and readers of the Bay Area Reporter in celebrating the historic 55th anniversary of its founding and recognize this free, community newspaper serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

The newspaper, founded April 1, 1971, by the late Bob Ross, has been designated by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as the official LGBTQ community outreach publication for the City and County of San Francisco.

Last November, members of the Imperial Council were joined by city politicos and the staff of the Bay Area Reporter in unveiling a plaque honoring Ross. The plaque was down the street from where Ross, who died at age 69 in December 2003, once lived, at 4200 20th Street. The site was recently recommended for a city landmark.

Yamashita, whom Ross first hired in 1988, served as an assistant editor under then-temporary news editor Ray O’Laughlin. Yamashita has been the paper’s publisher since 2017, filling Ross’ shoes. He’s the first Asian American owner of an LGBTQ publication.

The publication has covered major news stories, including the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the assassination of Harvey Milk, a pioneer in the fight for LGBTQ equality.

Most notably, the newspaper has published free community obituaries since AIDS started impacting the community. In August 1998, the newspaper ran a front-page story that stated, for the first time since the epidemic began, no obituaries had been submitted that week. That was indicative of the new medications which were helping people with the disease to live longer.

The newspaper’s most prominent columnist was Harvey Milk, who wrote about politics up until just before his assassination in 1978.

“Back in the 1970s, Milk had penned a column for the then-semimonthly, now-weekly LGBTQ newspaper to opine on politics both local and national,” wrote Matthew Bajko, its assistant news editor. “Called ‘Milk Forum,’ the pioneering gay civil rights leader filed 102 columns under his byline between October 2, 1974, and his last column, published days before his assassination on November 27, 1978. He had continued the column even after making history in the November 1977 election by winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In doing so, Milk became the first LGBTQ person elected to public office in both the city and state of California.”

To commemorate the anniversary, the Bay Area Reporter has unveiled a new line of Etsy products including coffee mugs, T-shirts, throw pillows and beach towels. In addition, the staff has collected campy retro 1970s advertisements for gay bars, male strip clubs and festive drag shows and converted them into gift items.

Items are available for purchase at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BayAreaReporterShop?dd_referrer=https://www.ebar.com/

IN THE NEWS
Volume 28
Issue 3