“Read my lips and they will tell you/ Enough is enough is enough is enough” erupted over the loudspeakers at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan during a photo montage that opened the memorial service for LGBTQ rights activist and Gay City News co-founder Troy Masters, who passed away on Dec. 11.
This message of resistance was a common theme throughout the March 30 memorial, which featured a speaker program packed with friends and media professionals who witnessed Masters’ fierce passion for advocacy and queer publications firsthand. The lineup was as much a testament to Masters’ extensive network in queer media as it was to his immense compassion for others.
Masters began his publishing career in advertising sales at OutWeek magazine in 1989. The publication folded two years later, but “he was determined, however, to keep a vibrant queer voice alive in New York,” said Gay City News founding editor Paul Schindler, who was close with Masters and organized the memorial.
Committed to empowering and uplifting that voice, Masters started Lesbian and Gay New York (LGNY) in his East Village apartment in 1994; the paper was relaunched as Gay City News in 2002 after securing new ownership.
“I know that a lot of the impetus behind Troy’s passion about queer media came from the horror that our community faced during the worst periods of the AIDS crisis,” said Schindler, who worked alongside Masters for 20 years. “The scars from that period always motivated him to continue pushing forward, and it made him uncompromising in his dedication to a media for, about, and by our community. He never retreated from that mission.”
Masters’ work — alongside Schindler and others — to establish Gay City News as the leading source of news for the queer community had a direct impact on policy changes in New York, including marriage equality and protections for people living with HIV/AIDS.
“What he has left us will be with us for the rest of our lives,” LGBTQ rights activist and Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club president Allen Roskoff said.
Masters was with Gay City News until 2015, at which point he moved to Los Angeles. He partnered with the Washington Blade to create a sister LGBTQ paper, the Los Angeles Blade, where he continued the same mission that inspired Gay City News: keeping queer media alive in communities that needed it most.
“More than someone who started things, he was someone who stuck with things,” said journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile, who spoke about Masters’ unwavering commitment to remaining in the world of community publishing and advocacy while resisting the pull of mainstream media.
“He was determined to foster vigorous truth-telling,” Signorile said.
John Sutter, former publisher of Community Media LLC, echoed this sentiment during his remarks. Sutter “took LGNY under his wing” when Masters came to him for support. He said that Masters didn’t hesitate when asked to choose a new name for the publication: Gay City News.
“I’m ready and New York is ready,” Masters had told him, signaling change for queer journalists in the city.
Thirteen years later, Masters left New York not just to seek further journalism opportunities, but to lay the same foundation for queer voices and politics on the West Coast that he had succeeded in establishing on the East Coast. The Los Angeles Blade was key in raising awareness about the mpox outbreak in 2022 and making sure at-risk communities had access to vaccines, and in 2023 the Blade won a GLAAD award for Excellence in LGBTQ Media.
“Imagine setting up gay papers in the two largest cities in the country,” Sutter said, portraying a vision as ambitious as it was revolutionary.
Journalist and political satirist Susie Day spoke about the impact of Masters’ multiple media properties on public policy and law in the communities they served.
“These publications were meant to save lives,” Day said. “And I think they did save lives.”
Dawn Ennis, journalism professor at the University of Hartford and former writer for the Los Angeles Blade, noted that despite the struggles that Masters and countless others faced at the end of 2024 when the 2025 US election results came in, queer media refuses to be silent. Two of Masters’ pioneering publications, Gay City News and the Los Angeles Blade, continue to bring award-winning news to the largest queer markets in the country, leveraging community support to bring inspiration.
“Troy, you did it,” Ennis said. “You did it.”
Other speakers of the day included Tony Glover, Andy Humm, Mick Meenan, Duncan Osborne, Michael Shirey, and Matt Tracy.
See some photos below:
