MIAMI – After more than a decade of service to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community, the South Florida Gay News has come to an end.
In a short statement, SFGN publisher Jason Parsley, Justin Wyse, and the SFGN team announced on Thursday that it was no longer “feasible” to continue running the publication.
“This was not an easy decision, but in the long run it’s the best decision for us and the community,” the statement said, later adding, “SFGN may be gone. But we are not. Stay tuned.”
A group of SFGN journalists plans to continue serving the community with OUTSFL in June. Attorney Norm Kent, the co-founder of SFGN, died on April 13 of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 73.
Kent moved to Fort Lauderdale from New York after graduating from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University in 1975 and was a proponent of legalizing marijuana use.
In the 1980s and 90s, The Miami Herald and The Sun Sentinel reported on his work as an advocate for vulnerable homeless teenagers — some of whom had been disowned by their families for being LGBTQ.
Kent, who continued making headlines for his advocacy work, was also a columnist for Playbill magazine and he had a radio show on WFTL AM before going into niche publishing in 1999.
After about four years of launching Express Gay News, Kent sold it to Window Media, which ran it as South Florida Blade and later went out of business.
In 2009, The Miami Herald reported that a new LGBT newspaper was going to launch in January 2010. SFGN competed against Florida Agenda, which shut down in 2016.