New York Native

On May 18, 1981, the New York Native, then America's most influential gay newspaper, published the first newspaper report on the disease that became known as AIDS. Having heard of a very rare type of pneumonia that struck some gay men, Lawrence D. Mass, the paper's medical writer, called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was advised that the rumors of a "gay cancer" were unfounded. He then wrote a story headlined: "Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded." Mass wrote:

Last week there were rumors that an exotic new disease had hit the gay community in New York. Here are the facts. From the New York City Department of Health, Dr. Steve Phillips explained that the rumors are for the most part unfounded. Each year, approximately 12 to 24 cases of infection with a protozoa-like organism, Pneumocystis carinii, are reported in New York City area. The organism is not exotic; in fact, it's ubiquitous. But most of us have a natural or easily acquired immunity.^[4][5]

Next month, on June 5, 1981, the CDC published the world's first clinical report on what became AIDS in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).^[4] On that same date, the CDC report was picked up and reported by the Los Angeles Times as the first mainstream newspaper coverage of the new disease.^[5] The New York Times followed suit on July 3, 1981. Although the Native covered the story almost three weeks prior, the June 5th date is often used as the first report of AIDS.^[5]

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Lawrence D. Mass

Lawrence D. Mass

Lawrence D. Mass, M.D. is an American physician and writer. A co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis, he wrote the first press reports in the United States on an illness later became known as AIDS. He is the author of numerous publications on HIV, hepatitis C, STDs, gay health, psychiatry and sex research, and on music, opera, and culture. He is also the author/editor of four books/collections. In 2009 he was in the first group of physicians to be designated as diplomates of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Since 1979, he has lived and worked as a physician in New York City, where he resided with his life partner, writer and activist Arnie Kantrowitz. Having written for the New York Native since the 1970s, he currently writes a column for The Huffington Post. An archival collection of his papers are at the New York Public Library.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Steve Phillips

Steve Phillips

Stephen Francis Phillips is an American baseball analyst and former baseball executive. He served as the general manager of the New York Mets from 1997 through 2003. He worked as a baseball analyst for ESPN from 2005 until his dismissal in October 2009. He currently serves as an MLB analyst on TSN and TSN 1050 radio as well as the host of The Leadoff Spot on SiriusXM's MLB Network Radio.

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is a weekly epidemiological digest for the United States published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was originally established as Weekly Health Index in 1930, changing its title to Weekly Mortality Index in 1941 and Morbidity and Mortality in 1952. It acquired its current name in 1976. It is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. Material published in the report is in the public domain and may be reprinted without permission. As of 2019, the journal's editor-in-chief is Charlotte Kent.

Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times, abbreviated as LA Times, is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper's coverage has evolved more recently away from U.S. and international headlines and toward emphasizing California and especially Southern California stories.

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as The Daily. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print, it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States. The newspaper is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Times Square, Manhattan.

In 1983, Larry Kramer wrote a famous impassioned front page piece for the Native, entitled "1,112 and Counting", which was published on March 14, 1983. From a profile on Larry Kramer in the New Yorker, published in 2002: "...it was a five-thousand-word screed that accused nearly everyone connected with health care in America—officials at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, in Washington, doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan, and local politicians (particularly Mayor Ed Koch)—of refusing to acknowledge the implications of the nascent AIDS epidemic."^[6][7][8]

In his piece, Kramer said: "If this article doesn't rouse you to anger, fury, rage and action, gay men may have no future on this Earth."

Ruling Shows How Far Nation Has Come on Epidemic, Justin Gillis, The Washington Post, June 26, 1998

^[9]

  In 2014 and 2018, 70 interviews with AIDS activists were conducted. The interviewees actively organized movements around Canada between the 1980s and 1990s . These interviews transcripts shared a variety of tales  regarding their resilience, loss, and struggles. An interview with Barry Deeprose reveals his first interactions with AIDS, how he only was able to access information from newspapers, specifically the New York Native, and how Public Health Canada neglected to discuss it. “Nevertheless, they had really strong and good stories. And there was nothing else! We could get nothing from Public Health; Health Canada didn’t even know, they just weren’t interested. It seems to me, and I’m not sure if Perrin Beatty was the Minister of Health at that point, but he couldn’t even say the word “AIDS” or “gay.”

In a New York Times article on the demise of the New York Native, Charles Ortleb, the magazine's publisher and editor, said that he was shutting down due to financial problems, but he conceded that the paper failed largely due to its controversial AIDS coverage. After its initial and pioneering success in making the gay community aware of the AIDS crisis, the paper later became unpopular for promoting conspiracy theories about AIDS and its causes, including the claim that HIV did not cause AIDS. The gay activist group ACT UP boycotted the publication in the mid 1980s.^[1][10] While there was initially some support for the Native's criticism of the governmental and scientific response to the AIDS epidemic, it eroded as Ortleb and the paper endorsed increasingly unlikely alternatives to HIV as the cause of AIDS. The cultural critic and AIDS activist Douglas Crimp wrote in 1987 that "...rather than performing a political analysis of the ideology of science, Ortleb merely touts the crackpot theory of the week, championing whoever is the latest outcast from the world of academic and government research."^{[3], p. 101} The paper's circulation consequently fell from 20,000 in 1985 to 8,000 in 1996.^[1]

Another contributing factor is that New York City, with an LGBT community that was often fractious and bitterly divided along gender, age and racial lines, has a long history of being a graveyard for gay publications. Those that have come and gone include Gaysweek (which was sued out of existence in 1979 by Newsweek magazine for trademark infringement), the New York City News (1980–83) QW (1991–1992), OutWeek (1989–1991), the New York Blade (which was actually the New York edition of the Washington Blade) (1997–2009), and LGNY (now Gay City News, the city's only surviving LGBT newspaper, 1995–present).

All of these publications also had to compete with the Village Voice, a citywide weekly alternative newspaper that extensively covered the 1969 Stonewall Riots that are credited as the birth of the modern gay liberation movement, and had enjoyed a large LGBT readership ever since—although it had a reputation for having an anti-gay slant in the late 1950s and early 1960s prior to the Stonewall Riots. The Voice published an annual Gay Pride issue in June.^[1][11]

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The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as The Daily. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print, it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States. The newspaper is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Times Square, Manhattan.

ACT UP

ACT UP

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and working to change legislation and public policies.

Douglas Crimp

Douglas Crimp

John Douglas Crimp was an American art historian, critic, curator, and AIDS activist. He was known for his scholarly contributions to the fields of postmodern theories and art, institutional critique, dance, film, queer theory, and feminist theory. His writings are marked by a conviction to merge the often disjunctive worlds of politics, art, and academia. From 1977 to 1990, he was the managing editor of the journal October. Before his death, Crimp was Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and professor of Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester.

Gaysweek

Gaysweek

Gaysweek was a weekly gay and lesbian newspaper based in New York City printed from 1977 until 1979. Considered the city's first mainstream weekly lesbian and gay newspaper, it was founded by Alan Bell in 1977 as an 8-page single-color tabloid and finished its run in 1979 as a 24-page two-color publication. It featured articles, letter, art and poetry. It was, at the time, only one of three weekly publications geared towards gay people. It was also the first mainstream gay publication published by an African-American.

OutWeek

OutWeek

OutWeek was a gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two-year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a cool new sensibility in lesbian and gay journalism.

Washington Blade

Washington Blade

The Washington Blade is an LGBT newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area. The Blade is the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States and third largest by circulation, behind the Philadelphia Gay News and the Gay City News of New York City. The Blade is often referred to as America's gay newspaper of record because it chronicled LGBT news locally, nationally, and internationally. The New York Times said the Blade is considered "one of the most influential publications written for a gay audience."

Gay City News

Gay City News

Gay City News is an free weekly LGBT newspaper based in New York City focusing on local and national issues relating to LGBT community. It was founded in 1994 as Lesbian Gay New York, later LGNY, and was sold to Community Media LLC, owner of The Villager, in 2002, which renamed the publication. It is the largest LGBT newspaper in the United States, with a circulation of 47,000.