+ info: Columbia Journalism Review
An LGBTQ news site, it was started in 2003 after its founder and editor-in-chief, Andy Towle, left Genre, a gay lifestyle magazine. Pronounced “toll road,” it rose to prominence during the gay blog boom of the late 90s and mid-2000s, when it became appointment reading for a devoted fanbase. “Towleroad was just a cute idea I came up with, not knowing that it was eventually going to turn into what it has,” he says.
In 2005, Towle was joined by Michael Goff, a founder of Outmagazine, who became co-owner and CEO of Towleroad. It seemed the dawn of a golden age of gay digital media; the same year brought 365Gay, a gay news outlet produced by LOGO, and The Backlot, a companion site to AfterEllen.com focused on gay and bisexual men. A few years later, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News, and NBC News launched verticals dedicated to LGBTQ coverage. Other publications began paying greater attention to stories of importance to queer readers.
