UPDATE: Regent is claiming that the Queerty story is false, though the long-winded letter about the future of the magazine does not flatly say "there is no truth to this" so much as it says they're "making strategic and sometimes difficult staff changes," all to strengthen The Advocate's brand. Is Queery just not a fan of Regent in the way it's not a fan of Barack Obama—to the point where any negative story is better than the truth? Or is Regent b.s.ing  and a year from now The Advocate doesn't exist? Read Regent's full reply here.

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I can't think of one snarky thing to say about the death of the leading gay-issues newsmagazine, The Advocate—it has been announced it will now be a 32-page insert inside Out. Which itself will die at some point, probably not years and years from now. It's hard to overstate the loss to the gay community. 

The Advocate has been around for 40 years chronicling gay news, following politics, tracing fads, providing a means by which stars (gay and straight) could directly reach a captive LGBT (not just G and not just L) audience. The death of The Advocate feels like a symptom of the admittedly slow death of "gay" as an identity. More and more, LGBT people are of the mindset that gay shouldn't matter. It shouldn't, but it does—abandoning it prematurely is only going to lead to things that will make us wish for it back again.

  

 When Boy Culture premiered, the party was sponsored by The Advocate. Having its imprimatur on that party made me so proud. I also once did a phoner with Harvey Fierstein for The Advocate. How gay was that sentence? And in a move that thoroughly enraged my slightly older, infinitely less everything else boss, I was chosen as one of "30 under 30" by the magazine—an honor I still can't believe I was lucky enough to receive.

The death of the gay print media (the rest are not long for this world and will also be missed) is a microcosm of the death of all print media (ditto). It's going to be up to bloggers and other on-line reporting/opinion-making to pick up the slack—and frankly, I don't think we're up to the job. For one thing, for many of us, blogging isn't a "job," even if it's hard, time-consuming work. (Queerty is where I found out about The Advocate, and Queerty is no Advocate.) I'm not trying to get a swelled head about it—just the opposite!—but face facts: The surviving print media doesn't give two shits about gay rights and gay issues unless it's that one, nationally appealing case (Matthew Shepard) that comes along every decade.

I will genuinely miss The Advocate—and I think once its absence settles in, many of us will miss what it takes with it.