Out, and Down and Out, in S.F.

While many San Franciscans wonder for whom the bell tolls (Chronicle or Examiner?) in our two-daily town, a parallel drama of survival and death plays out in the city's gay press: Last month, the weekly Sentinel folded. And last week, financial troubles and tensions linked to contract negotiations at the biweekly Bay Times spelled the elimination of its remaining unionized staff.

Though the city's other major gay papers -- the weekly Bay Area Reporter (aka B.A.R.) and Frontiers, a year-old biweekly -- show no outward signs of turmoil, publishers of both blame newsprint costs, which have doubled in the last year, for belt-tightening and deferred expansion.

Those sobering facts signal another in a series of upheavals that have shaped the city's queer press since the '70s and early '80s, when as many as eight gay rags crowded the doorways of bars, bookstores, and coffeehouses. Observers of the alternative press note that gay and lesbian newspapers in San Francisco have always depended on ego-driven publishers inclined to impose their wills. One five-year veteran of two gay periodicals compares the owners to feudal lords, each staking out different territory, subject to the alliances (and enemies) such fiefdoms have established.

According to departing staffers, tumult reigns at Bay Times, a self-described "gay/lesbian/bi/trans newspaper and events calendar" with a press run of over 40,000 and a reputation for in-depth, ongoing coverage of news and arts. Last week, acknowledging that the paper needed to cut costs, longtime Publisher/Editor Kim Corsaro laid off reporter Tim Kingston, an eight-year veteran on her staff. She also fired ad salesman Matt Lewis. ("I was told I was always late getting back from lunch," recounts Lewis, who'd been at the paper almost two years.) Kingston and Lewis are the last of five employees in the recently formed union bargaining unit to go; the others have either resigned (citing unbearable working conditions) or were fired in the last year -- bringing a whiff of union-busting to Corsaro's actions.

"Though she pretends to be pro-union, she most definitely is not in terms of her own paper," Lewis remarks. "It's a power issue: Somebody was calling her on her shit" -- a reference to Corsaro's alleged mistreatment of staffers -- "and she couldn't tolerate it. Being held accountable to the Northern California Newspaper Guild ... is something she's not capable of."

Greta Christina, a Bay Times staffer who quit the paper in August, seconds that assessment: "I left because working [for Corsaro] is like being in an abusive relationship." The employees organized earlier this year, according to Christina, "not to get more money or more benefits. ... The primary issue was the disrespectful and abusive way she dealt with her staff. We wanted some accountability."

Larkie Gildersleeve, the administrative officer at the Northern California Newspaper Guild who worked with Bay Times staffers on contract negotiations, notes that Corsaro was the first alternative newspaper publisher in the city to recognize the union. She points out that "negotiations had been undertaken with the knowledge that we're not dealing with deep pockets. We were interested in achieving a contract that would stabilize work conditions for employees."

Corsaro maintains that her employees' union activity "had no effect on the decision of downsizing or changing staff. I still recognize the union." As for ex-staffers' criticism of her management style, Corsaro states flatly: "I would rather not comment on that. People are entitled to their opinion. My focus is on keeping the paper going in an incredibly difficult time. When finances get tough," she holds, "other things get tough -- that's real life."

Keeping Bay Times going through the latest round of troubles will indeed focus Corsaro. Though she has pulled out of crises in the past -- a fact Christina acknowledges -- Corsaro's current woes are indeed daunting. Bay Times, as Christina describes it, "fills an important niche. Of all the gay papers, it's most inclusive of lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, and people of color. It's also the most politically progressive."

Now, coupled with the rising cost of putting out Bay Times, Corsaro faces drastic alterations in the way the paper covers news and fulfills what she acknowledges is its historic "co-sexual" mission. Kingston is a reporter respected for his investigations of Shanti, the troubled AIDS care organization, as well as the city's Police Department. (It was a Kingston story in 1992 that allegedly prompted then-S.F. Police Chief Richard Hongisto to order bundles of Bay Times removed from the stands -- which led to a lengthy court fight that continues to preoccupy Corsaro.) Laying off Kingston means scaling back news coverage and analysis at a time when the paper can ill afford to lose its reporting edge over B.A.R. and Frontiers.

Kingston says he was "upset by the layoff, [although] it was not exactly unexpected." Both he and Corsaro have discussed a free-lance relationship, but Kingston maintains, "I have no idea of how she intends to continue the level of coverage." Like his colleagues, he is perplexed by the vanishing names on the masthead. "I find her support for the union skin-deep," he asserts.