Our Pride Month special focus series wraps up today with a Q&A with AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen. At a time when entertainment continues to dominate much of our culture, and drive much of society’s engagement with our community, it seems fitting to talk about pride and what it means now with one of the leading online authorities on entertainment.
If you’re like me, you visit – and enjoy – AfterElton.com regularly. It is one of the most visited gay entertainment news sites on the Web. If you’re unfamiliar with AfterElton.com, it’s the site for news, information and commentary about entertainment for gay and bisexual men (the ladies have their own site as well – the fabulous AfterEllen.com).
As Michael explains in our conversation, the site reports news as much as it reflects it and it serves a really important purpose in holding a mirror up to the entertainment community to reflect what is important to gay- and gay-friendly audiences. In so doing, it influences a great deal of what our community has to say about entertainment and the media.
We think Michael makes a great case for the power of online communications and the power of sites like AfterElton.com to shape the conversation about gay and lesbian people. Once you’ve read his interview, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Now, on with the show…
Ben Finzel: Tell us about the business model for AfterElton.com. You’re owned by Logo and are part of the Viacom family. How has that helped your growth and development?
Michael Jensen: We were acquired by Logo a few years ago – they provide us with financial and technical support, but are very respectful of our editorial independence. This combination has really given us the freedom to grow as much as we have.
Ben Finzel: Entertainment has become one of the most potent influences on broader societal acceptance of LGBT people. In this pride month, do you think that’s something we ought to be celebrating? AfterElton.com posts and features generate a high volume of comments. From your interactions, do you have a sense of how your audience views celebrations like Pride month? Is it still a relevant event in their lives or has the 365-day-a-year focus on LGBT issues made possible by the blogosphere lessened the importance of a specific day or celebration?
Michael Jensen: I think Pride is still relevant, but less so for two reasons. As you mention, thanks to the internet, there is a constant availability of gay news and entertainment coverage, even for those folks in less gay-friendly parts of the country. I also detect a generational shift occurring, in that younger generations don't need Pride events in the same self-affirming way previous generations did. I know that for some folks twenty years ago, Pride was the one day a year where you really got to be surrounded by gay people in an extremely gay friendly setting. The internet can't provide that same feeling physically, but on sites such as AfterElton.com you can pretty much get it mentally 365 days a year.
Ben Finzel: You feature advertising on the site. What’s the benefit of advertising on AfterElton.com for marketers? How should they be thinking about leveraging interest in your site for their benefit if they choose to partner with you?
Michael Jensen: The benefits are twofold. First, advertising with us allows companies to connect directly with a certain demographic — gay and bisexual men, and our many female admirers both gay and straight — and let those folks know about their products.
And as tends to be the case with gay men online, our readers skew more demographically "desirable" (savvy, loyal, intelligent, educated, etc.) than the average internet user. Advertising with us also allows businesses to communicate they are gay-friendly and aware of the gay market, without have to say a single word about that. Just having your ad appear on our site lets the gay community know you are a progressive company, and that's been proven to translate to increased patronage by gay consumers.
I'd also add that since AfterElton.com is a legitimate news source (we've won a GLAAD award and our coverage is frequently cited by traditional news outlets such as USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and The Rachel Maddow Show) advertising on our site is much more "legitimate" than on gossip or tabloid-style websites.
Ben Finzel: What’s the future of sites like AfterElton.com? Do you worry about a backlash against what some may consider to be “frivolous” entertainment sites?
Michael Jensen: I feel like the sky's the limit for AfterElton.com. Since I took over four years ago, we've had non-stop month-over-month growth and it's now the largest website of its kind online. I see nothing that will stop us from continuing that growth.
As for being "frivolous," there are certainly sites like that out there, but I don't see AfterElton.com falling into that category. We certainly have some fun content, but we provide a good mix of fun and informative entertainment news analysis. In just the past month, we posted two very serious articles — "How Fox Packaged Homophobia as Entertainment" and "Why Can’t You Just Butch Up? Gay Men, Effeminacy, and Our War with Ourselves" — that took a serious look at how different aspects of popular culture treat and influence gay topics and issues.
We've also done in-depth articles on how gay journalists operate in a mostly straight world, and did a two part article on how television handles gay content by interviewing the entertainment presidents of each of the broadcast networks, as well as the straight and gay producers/writers of some of the most successful shows on television including Max Mutchnick, Greg Berlanti and Silvio Horta.
Ben Finzel: Michael, thanks for sharing your insight and point of view with us. Keep up the entertaining and illuminating work.
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