George Bakan’s sudden death last June left a plethora of SGN back issues, over 47 years of Seattle’s LGBTQ history preserved in the weekly paper (Image courtesy Angela Cragin)
Weekly newspaper Seattle Gay News has been reporting on issues within the LGBTQ community in and around Seattle for nearly five decades. Publisher George Bakan was at the helm for more than 30 years, and when he died on June 7, 2020 — in the middle of working on the next week’s paper — the people who love SGN knew just what to do: Preserve the past and move into the future.
SGN is the nation’s third-oldest LGBTQ newspaper, and after Bakan’s death, SGN organized a campaign to help keep the paper afloat during the pandemic. The Seattle Public Library and other organizations took note, and organized an ambitious archiving project that would take about a year to finish. Now nearing completion, 47 years of SGN archives will be available at the Seattle Public Library, University of Washington, and several other libraries across the United States.
The SGN archives document “the history that mainstream media did not cover,” says Bakan’s daughter Angela Cragin. “The paper captured all of that, [including] all the names of victims of the AIDS epidemic and what was happening in the community, a community that was shunned for so long. It truly is important history.”
Cragin lives in the Tri-Cities, and is self-admittedly out of the loop when it comes to Seattle’s LGBTQ communities as well as journalism. Bakan must have had a reason for designating her as the heir of his publisher role with SGN, even if she didn’t understand why at first. “He said to me a number of times, ‘Hey, when I die the paper is yours.’ I don’t know anything about papers, I didn’t, and now I do,” she said.
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After Bakan’s death, Cragin took over as publisher, acting more as a behind-the-scenes facilitator. She credited the existing SGN team for their survival, and in particular copy editor Rick McKinnon, who has been with SGN for about 26 years, with preserving the back issues.
Cragin and a team of Bakan’s family, friends, and volunteers had the “mammoth undertaking” of going through the late publisher’s belongings at his 23rd and Madison home/office and other storage units. McKinnon protected boxes of SGN papers “like a bulldog,” making sure they didn’t end up in the recycling bin.
Seattle Public Library’s former executive director and chief librarian Marcellus Turner saw coverage of SGN’s campaign, and reached out to McKinnon to see if there was a plan to archive the back issues. During Bakan’s life there had never been an official plan to preserve the papers, but they had to be moved somewhere, so the timing was perfect for an archival project.
“Marcellus took it from there,” Cragin said. Turner facilitated a team of about 12 archivists, librarians, historians, and volunteers from the Seattle Public Library, University of Washington, MOHAI, Washington State Library, HistoryLink, and the City of Seattle.
The informal committee had monthly virtual meetings throughout the archival process. They collected copious boxes from Bakan’s residence and storage spaces and housed them at the City Municipal Archives downtown. City Archivist Anne Frantilla and former City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen put out a call for volunteers to help assemble runs of SGN in chronological order. Compiling one run of a weekly 47-year old collection means about 2,444 issues for one set. The goal was to compile 10 complete sets, but some issues didn’t have as many copies as others. Frantilla created an extensive Google spreadsheet to keep track of how many copies there were of each issue.
Some of SGN’s staff pictured in April. Since Bakan’s death, a new team comprised of veteran and younger contributors have joined together to lead the weekly paper into the future. (Image: Alex Alvarez/SGN)
McKinnon reached out to institutions and organizations across the U.S. to see who would be interested in carrying a run of the SGN archives. As the archival project finally nears completion, full runs of the SGN archives will be placed with Yale’s Beinecke Library, the University of Washington, Washington State Library, Stonewall National Museum & Archives, Seattle Public Library, and at SGN headquarters. The Library of Congress will house a selection of “headline” issues (think SGN’s greatest hits), and MOHAI has also requested about 43 special issues.
Old newspapers are delicate, and Seattle Public Library archivists are storing the archives in special boxes held at certain temperatures to help preserve them. The entire run will be available on microfiche microfilm to limit physical handling of the papers.
The expensive and laborious process of digitizing the SGN archives was somewhat of a pipe dream until two weeks ago when Cragin received news that the Washington State Library was partnering with Newspapers.com to digitize the SGN archives. “This is the sprinkles on top—it’s literally amazing that it’s going to happen,” she said.
“This really cool project was so eye-opening. This team just made things happen because they’re doers. It was such a beacon of light that I needed in what I was going through.”
The team bringing SGN into the future is a mix of long-standing staff like McKinnon and a new roster of younger contributors, including associate editor A.V. Eichenbaum who joined the paper at the end of last year. Eichenbaum said that in the past, SGN catered mostly to white, cisgendered gay men, but the next generation of Seattle’s LGBTQ communities are challeging that paradigm. Millennials and Gen Z are the two most openly queer generations to date, they said.
“That means LGBTQIA+ issues are the world’s issues from here on out, and the world’s issues are LGBTQIA+ issues,” Eichenbaum said. “We’ve expanded our scope to covering COVID vaccinations and talking about mental health because those things are affecting the community.”
On June 7, SGN also launched a new podcast, Radio SGN. You can listen to the first episode here.
Bakan speaking at a forum on LGBTQ affirming senior housing on Capitol Hill in 2017
Working with a mix of both young and established writers, Eichenbaum wants to amplify voices and perspectives that have historically been overlooked, and fill in gaps in LGBTQ coverage that might not be included by national news outlets.
“My focus is on the future and the now of the paper, but that doesn’t mean we can just forget everything and everyone that came before,” Eichenbaum said. “I wouldn’t be able to be openly Bi+ or openly Nonbinary if it weren’t for the decades of activism that came before this. I owe a lot to George Bakan and his motley crew of journalists over the years.”
After a year of loss and emotional ups and downs, the #SGN staff is stronger than ever and #prepride issue is the best in decades. You must grab this. pic.twitter.com/F69QLTsKvw
— SGN: Seattle Gay News (@SeattleGayNews) June 20, 2021
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