Gay Times is to be rebranded as GT, as part of a facelift to include extra lifestyle and real life sections and a change to how it covers news.
The 23-year-old gay monthly, published by Millivres, will be relaunched for its March issue.
The traditional news section will be reduced to a news digest as an introduction to a current affairs section, followed by feature length pieces.
Editor Joseph Galliano said the move was a response to daily internet reporting. As well as mainstream online news, the gay community is served by British website pinknews.co.uk. and worldwide news networks such as 365gay.com.
Galliano said: ‘There’s absolutely no point in publishing news in the traditional, pre-internet way. We’re not going to do that any more when you end up being six weeks behind the net. What we can do better is reflective pieces with analysis and comment.’Galliano, who took up the post last October, said the title would not forfeit its political edge with bumped up lifestyle features. ‘In doing this, we have made it very clear, particularly given our heritage, the importance of the magazine within the community as a political beast. We are beefing up our news section, which now is incorporated into a current affairs section – staying at the heart of the magazine – with more analysis and more comment. It remains a very important part of the magazine.’The rebranding as GT was due to the title embracing its nickname and as a way of flagging up the revamp, according to Galliano. He added that GT would be ‘slightly more discreet’than Gay Times on the news-stand. Asked if there was still a need for the specific gay press, Galliano said there was a need for publications such as GT that did not assume its readers’ sexuality throughout the title. ‘In the mainstream press, there still tends to be a them or us divide, talking to a widely assumed heterosexual audience,’he said.
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