The staff of the Washington Blade, a 40-year-old gay weekly in D.C. that was shut down unceremoniously Monday morning, has relaunched the paper under a new name: D.C. Agenda.
With just a few days, no office and some donations, the volunteer staff, led by erstwhile Blade publisher Lynne Brown and editor Kevin Naff, got out a print and online product with a handful of local gay-interest stories.
“The strength of the Washington Blade did not lie in its brand name — it came from the spirit of those who worked passionately to serve and inform our community. Those people are still here. Our work continues,” Naff wrote in a letter to readers.
Naff also wrote that the Agenda will continue to cover the Blade‘s beats, including “Congress, the White House, the LGBT rights movement, the D.C. marriage fight [and] local hate crimes.”
He revealed that the paper’s parent company, which went out of business with no warning to the staff, had canceled final paychecks and offered no severance.