It all comes down to Mondays and Tuesdays, our production days. This is when everything comes together. It’s a crazy time and not for the faint-hearted. Miss the print deadline and the paper is not only late out on the street but thousands of loyal bnews junkies are hot on the phone wondering where their weekly gay media fix is. 

Production days have a logic all their own. Reduced to babbling idiots, otherwise intelligent editors have been known to cower under their desks – and the sales team, never ones to shy away from a challenge, have taken to performing cartwheels around the office… whatever it takes to relieve the tension.  

We estimate in excess of 3,000 cups of tea and coffee have been consumed along with 400 blocks of chocolate, 300 cans of Diet Coke and several plantations of tobacco. And those are just the substances we can mention here. But seriously, gay publishing is only as good as the stories, the people, the issues it covers. For our part, we’ve covered a lot of ground.

In putting this, our 200th issue to bed, we take the opportunity to blow our own horn and to celebrate the many voices and faces that have contributed to the robust weekly publication that is bnews.    

A Star is born 

The history of bnews has been a long and interesting one, with several owners, a corporate bust and the addition of a new title, Melbourne Star.  In May 1992, the first issue of Brother Sister was launched by Bill Calder and Jeffrey Gradd. Brother Sister was bought by Satellite Media in 2000.

After that company’s spectacular collapse within just 12 months, Calder re-launched bnews in its current format in December 2000. But because he was unable to use the Brother Sister title, Calder took the B and the S from the original title and snuck ‘new’ in the middle. The rest, as they say, is history. 

The first issue of Melbourne Star appeared on the streets in October 2001 and quickly became the leading voice of the community. Both papers appeared fortnightly, in alternate weeks to each other. In late 2005 bnews changed hands, and Tom Milosevic became the publisher. Melbourne Star became the community flagship title, while bnews became more focused on queer lifestyle and entertainment.  

In December 2006 the company made the decision to merge the two papers. bnews’ news section expanded and adopted the pink star that had adorned the cover of Melbourne Star for the previous seven years. Melbourne Star editor, Doug Pollard, climbed aboard the bnews bandwagon as news editor, joining editor Cathy Anderson and entertainment editor Daren Pope.