After 25 years covering the LGBT community, Pink Paper is discontinuing its' daily website. It's not the only community news organisation to close but are such closures indication of a wider trend or is media, and more appropriately how news is consumed, evolving?

I always believed niche news organisations like in the LGBT community would survive. Once these newspapers were the only voice. But in moving on LGBT history could be forgotten.

Will the community continue to move toward complete inclusion in the mainstream? Will there always be a need for separate publications? Is this simply about the economics? And what of the new voices which will emerge as our consumption and social interaction of the news changes?

I think we're seeing a gradual shift towards LGBT culture becoming part of the mainstream. The media started addressing LGBT issues properly, and now we're seeing a hybrid of the two. (Remember the Sun describing Brighton as a "nasty town" full of AIDS and gays?). We can still have our gay Pride/clubs/publications, but being able to chat to gay people on the move, read newspapers that aren't openly hostile and a sense that many of the major battles against homophobia have been won means that we're becoming ever more mainstream.

I wonder who the mainstream media is addressing when covering LGBT issues. Reading articles in the Independent or Guardian (are there other papers?) it feels like the authors are directing their words to all readers. These are also broad issues, not local news.

Would the mainstream tackle topics like clubs such as G-A-Y Heaven attracting a more mainstream crowd, or even what events are happening in the community? Though there is a shift toward mainstream inclusion, will there not alway be a need for local coverage just as many 'communities' maintain local papers? Aside from the general decline in news consumption, I don't think the appetite has diminished, only shifted to other mediums. Or am I wrong that the community cares?

The niche gay publications that I've seen seem to do a poor job of tackling this kind of 'local news' though. From what I've seen, gay publications seem to be gravitating towards broader issues.

Maybe it is the consequence of trying to deliver 'local news' to a global audience, but most gay publications seem to offer up the same mix of album, film reviews and PR that you'd get from the Sunday supplements, with a mildly gay twist and a poorer quality of writing.

I've got nothing against them. When I first came out, gay magazines helped me find and define my identity. Somewhere along the way they've just become a mix of soft porn, PR fluff and PR agency fodder. I don't feel they need to be in my media mix like say the Guardian or DF.