12 ▼ d «c * m b «r 6. 1996 T just out
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After four money-losing years The Texas Triangle decided to
call it quits, but loyal readers decided otherwise
▼
by Richard Shumate
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till staring at a mountain of debt after
months of searching for a way to keep
the presses rolling, Kay Longcope and
Barbara Wohlgemuth decided, reluc­
tantly, that they had no choice but to pull
the plug on the adventure they called The
S
Triangle.
Four years of their life and financial resources
had been sunk into the scrappy, award-winning
Austin-based weekly that garnered national at­
tention in 1995 after it became the target of an
organized boycott by the Christian right. But by
this past September, the Triangle's, debt had grown
to $30,000, and Longcope and Wohlgemuth con­
cluded that the paper’s financial woes weren’t
fixable.
“We looked long and hard at the bottom line.
We owed more money than we had coming in,”
says Longcope of their decision to cease publica­
tion with the Oct. 10 issue. “We had simply
reached the end of our finan­
cial resources.”
W hat L ongcope and
Wohlgemuth couldn’t know
when they made that heart-
wrenching announcement was
that this was not to be the last
chapter in the story of The Texas
Triangle. But it didn’t take them
long to find out. Word of the
Triangle's, impending closure
started racing through Austin.
“And that’s when everything
went nuts,” says Longcope.
“ I think people were
stunned,” says the Rev. Ken
Martin, pastor of Austin’s
M etropolitan C om m unity
Church. “We just all kind of
took for granted that the Tri­
angle was going to be there. We realized how
badly we were going to miss it.”
Most of the Austin community, says Martin,
had no idea that the newspaper was in such
danger. (“It never occurred to Barbara and me to
stand on the comer with a tin can,” says Longcope.)
And what helped turn shock into resolve was the
gleeful reaction of an Austin-based Christian right
group to the Triangle's demise.
Wyatt Roberts, head of the American Family
Association of Texas, launched a boycott against
Triangle advertisers in September 1995. He
quickly claimed credit for forcing the Triangle to
close, even though Longcope says the boycott
“had nothing whatsoever to do” with the paper’s
financial problems. (In fact, the boycott caused a
temporary jump in ad sales, as people outraged by
Roberts’ tactics rallied around the paper.)
Austin’s lesbian and gay community was gal­
vanized into action. Within days, a group of
community leaders met with Wohlgemuth to talk
about possible ways to revive the Triangle. Open
meetings were held in both Austin and Houston,
the paper’s other primary market, so that readers
and the Triangle's owners and staff could brain­
storm about ways to keep the newspaper going.
People sent in small contributions, $25 or $35,
with letters about how much the newspaper meant
to them. A straight gay-friendly pastor turned
over a $ 100 funeral honorarium, saying he wanted
a “resurrection” of the Triangle. By mid-Novem­
ber, $3,500 had been raised, two additional fund­
raisers were in the works, and Longcope and
Wohlgemuth were in negotiations with outside
investors willing to pump new money into the
paper.
Buoyed by all of that, the Triangle resumed
publication Oct. 24, missing just one issue.
“The community was as unified around this as
around anything I’ve seen in the three years I have
lived in Austin,” says Kathy Taylor, executive
director of the Cornerstone Gay and Lesbian
Texas
Community Center. “The message from the audi­
ence [at the community meeting] was that we
don’t want to see it closed.”
Of the community’s reaction, Longcope says
that “frankly, I was stunned. And obviously very
much encouraged.”
Longcope and Wohlgemuth, who are life part­
ners as well as business partners, started the paper
in 1992 after they moved to Austin from Massa­
chusetts. Longcope, a Texas native, had retired
after a long career as a journalist with the Boston
Globe. When she got back to Texas and saw that
Austin’s lesbian and gay community had no lo­
cally based news publication, she decided to start
one.
Longcope says she also
remembered how isolated she
felt as a teenager in rural Texas
coming to terms with her
sexual identity as a lesbian.
“One part of our mission
was to reach out to young
people— young gays and les­
bians— to let them know they
had a place to turn to,” she
says.
One thing that set the Tri­
angle apart from many other
gay and lesbian publications
was that it refused to accept
advertising o f an overtly
sexual nature, turning down
potentially lucrative ads for
1 -900 phone sex numbers and
bar ads with next-to-naked hunks.
Longcope believes accepting those ads would
alienate the mainstream advertisers the Triangle
wants to cultivate. She says she also wants to
create a publication that represents the main­
stream of gay life— one that could sit on the
coffee table even if Mother was coming for a visit.
Despite the paper’s financial difficulties,
Longcope told the audience at one of the commu­
nity meetings that she will not abandon that policy.
The comment sparked applause.
Though Austin and Houston have been its
primary markets, the Triangle also circulated in
other parts of Texas— places where it had little
advertising support. Longcope now concedes that
“we went statewide way too fast.”
The long-term strategy for keeping the Tri­
angle alive involves focusing on the Austin and
Houston markets. The revived Triangle has a sepa­
rate edition for each city, with a front page with
news specific to Austin or Houston. New investors,
some from out of state, should be on board early
next year, and some of the additional money will be
used to make a push for more advertising revenue
in the lucrative Houston market.
The new and improved Triangle debuted on
Oct. 24 with a one-word front page headline:
"Thanks!”
“This week we are giving you a 28-page paper,
crossing our fingers and hoping that, week to week,
we can do as well or better,” Longcope wrote in an
open letter to readers. ‘T o us, that is the best way
to repay all of you who have called, sent e-mail,
written letters or checks or advertised.
“We want you to get value for value so that,
together, we continue to build community.”
The community
was as unified around
this as around any­
thing I ’ve seen in the
three years I have
lived in Austin, ” says
Kathy Taylor, execu­
tive director o f the
Cornerstone Gay and
Lesbian Community
Center.