Newspapers / Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.) / June 1, 1996, edition 1 / Page 1
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tn The Carolinas’ Most Comprehensive Gay & Lesbian Newspaper Amendment 2 ruled unconstitutional Page 3 Two SC counties flip over gays Page 4 Q-Culture — arts section makes its debut Page 22 Published Every Two Weeks On Recycled Paper • Volume 11, Number 1 • June 1, 1996 • FREE Ytv Q ♦nr*'*'*. '^'’gur- A/r ^5* .el ■f VT "! 'P'e. w " '** , ’^6 'fit J •nfeT''/ ■ Now Every Two Weeks Have you ever experienced one of those cosmic moments when several important threads of your life intersect with life- altering results? Well, the issue of Q-A^t?r« you’re holding repre sents one of those for us. This is our Tenth Anniversary/First Bi-weeldy/Re-designed Format/Pride Month issue. Pretty cool, right? Well, read on for the full 411. Tenth Anniversary I don’t know the science on this, but newspaper years must be akin to dog years because we staffers feel like we’re aging at a similar rate! (Don’t go there!) But, this is a time to be joyous and we definitely are. With all the grief that gays and lesbians get from society, it’s a major achievement when one of our insti tutions lasts for a whole decade. When I see that the paper is not only surviving, but thriving, it gives me a great sense of pride — and appreciation. Because, we absolutely could not have done this without the patronage of both our advertisers and readers. Your emotional and financial support is at the core of this celebration. Also central to the story is the vision of Queen City Quordinators, a community group whose previous role had primarily been one of fundraising to subsidize other organiza tions. QCQ created the upstart newspaper in June 1986 and assumed the responsibility of publishing it on a monthly basis. They saw it through both good and bad times, but never missed an issue regardless. That’s a pretty impressive feat for a group of folks with relatively little publishing experience. Even though only one of the founders remains with Q-Notes, current publisher Jim Yarbrough, the spirit of all those QCQ pioneers lives in these pages to this day. As the paper has grown to become one of the most respected gay and lesbian newspa pers around, a commitment to providing quality, infor mative journalism has re mained the staff’s utmost (Historical footnote: The “Q” in Q-Notes stood for “Queen City” when QCQ coined the name...yes, we know what you thought it stood for.) Going Bi-weekly For those of you — like me — who are never quite sure if that means twice a week or every two weeks, it means every two weeks in this case. Instead of publishing 12 issues of Q-Notes per year, like we’ve done for the last decade, we’ll now be pro ducing 25 (skipping one during the New Year holiday). In prac tical terms, this means you should go back to your pick-up site of choice in two weeks and get the new issue. The decision to go bi-weekly wasn’t reached lightly; but, you told us in no uncertain terms that you want Q-Notes more often — getting it once a month just didn’t satisfy you. (Sounds de- pressingly familiar doesn’t it?) Even though we are a little daunted by the hectic schedule that publishing every two weeks will create, we are also tremen dously excited. Putting out the newspaper for you all more fre quently will allow us to serve you even better (and greatly im prove our social lives — not!). Q-Notes will be more current with breaking news; advertisers and organizations will be able to better promote their events and fundraisers; and, we’ll finally catch up on the backlog of “Curbside” strips that we have lay ing around here. Very good things, indeed. Re-designed Format The appearance of this issue is the result of weeks of inten sive meetings and work sessions. The staff overhauled the de sign from the ground up, holding each step in the process to one primary measurement: does the change increase readability and create a more appealing appearance. When the answer was “no,” we started over; when the answer was “yes,” we got even pickier. Slowly, the new design began to take shape. One of the most immediately noticable changes, and by far the toughest to manage, was the creation of a new Q-Notes logo. After serving us faithfully for many years, the old one had be come too much like Diana Ross — fabulous in its time, but now just too damn old to be effective. It had to be sent to that corporate-image graveyard in the sky. In it’s place we have un veiled our new one (kinda like our version of the Arch Deluxe). Additionally, we modified our body text and headline fonts; changed our column-head presentation; altered our “continued on” lines to include keywords from headlines; and, added ar ticle “enders” to clearly tell the reader that the story is done. ■And many of the changes go beyond mere cosmetics. One of the biggest improvements is the addition of our new art sec tion, “Q-Culture.” We’ll offer interviews, gossip, reviews and recommendations from a broad spectrum of areas. Our inten tion is to stretch the definition of queer art to its outer limit. Are you listening NEA? Pride Month Even though we’ve had our share of Pride events over the years — the energy from Pride ’86 spurred the creation of Q- Notes — we still get excited about the opportunity to come to gether with several thousand of our closest friends and celebrate. This year is certainly no exception. Our hosts in Winston-Salem have been working diligently, over the past year to create a memorable event — judging from the promotional materials that have been distributed, they’ve succeeded in spades. There appears to be ample opportunity for education, entertainment and spandex. (How very.) Plus, Pride weekend is coming on the heels of an unprec edented amount of activity on gay issues, at both a national and regional level. We have a lot to be happy about — Amendment 2, Harvey Gantt, Spartanburg, SC (dl of these topics are in this issue) — and we have some things to be concerned about — “gay marriage” bans, Jesse Helms, Greenville, SC (these too). But', on the whole. May was an exceptional month for the gay community and a wonderful prelude to our little soiree. I hope to see each and every one of you in Winston-Salem this month — in the non-smoking section, of course. ▼
Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.)
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June 1, 1996, edition 1
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