The Washington Blade was founded in 1969 as the country’s first gay newspaper and would later be described by the New York Times as the “paper of record for the LGBT community.”

The weekly print edition continues nearly 50 years later along with robust digital and mobile outlets. The Los Angeles Blade was launched in 2017. The Blade has won dozens of awards for its journalism and is the only alternative publication that is a member of the White House press pool. The Blade is a credentialed member of the White House Press Corps and White House Correspondents Association. The paper’s mission is to cover the LGBT community and movement in D.C. and around the world to advance understanding of the challenges and legal disadvantages facing LGBT people.

The Blade Foundation was founded in 2010 initially to fund the digitization of the full 47-year print and photo archive of the paper to make it free and publicly accessible. With that work well underway, the Foundation is shifting its focus to raising money to fund enterprise journalism projects in areas where LGBT advocacy work and visibility remain limited. Future projects include creating a scholarship program for aspiring LGBTQ journalists.