The Bay Area Reporter, which is both San Francisco and America’s longest continuously-published and highest circulation LGBTQ newspaper, has always been SF Gay History’s preeminent source for reporting on the homophile history of our community.
And now the BAR has made that even easier by posting digital archives of every issue dating back to the first issue in April of 1971.
The archives are made possibly by a grant from the Bob Ross Foundation. Ross co-founded the BAR in 1971 and served as its publisher until his death in 2003.
The archives appear in several forms:
- Bay Area Reporter on the California Digital Newspaper Collection – The most comprehensive results for keyword searches.
- Bay Area Reporter on the Internet Archive – The most effective access for browsing or reading issue by issue and page by page.
- Bay Area Reporter Obituary Database – In cooperation with the Bay Area Reporter, this searchable database contains all obituaries that have appeared in the BAR since it began publishing them in 1972.
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Journalism has been struggling in recent years, especially local journalism. The pain got even worse in 2020 when many advertisers in the local gay press — like bars, clubs, nightlife promoters, theaters — haven’t been allowed to hold in-person events because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and consequently have suspended their advertising.
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