By Tom LeNoble—
Randy Alfred is a pioneering LGBTQ+ journalist, founding news editor of the San Francisco Bay Times, and founding member and board member of the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists. He produced and hosted The Gay Life on KSAN-FM and challenged biased media coverage through groundbreaking journalism. A longtime advocate for fair, accurate reporting, Alfred was inducted into the NLGJA Hall of Fame in 2015.
Tom LeNoble: Randy, take us back to 1978. What was it like to be the founding news editor of the San Francisco Bay Times?
Randy Alfred: It was an adventure. We were trying to do something that hadn’t been done on the West Coast, which was to have a newspaper produced jointly by lesbians and gay men. This was in the days before we had LGBTQ+. “Lesbians and gay men” were the then acceptable inclusive terms. The first Bay Times put out three issues and then sputtered out for lack of funding. [Editor’s Note: The publication shortly thereafter was reintroduced as Coming Up before going back to its original name.] It’s nice to see it after all these years still pumping out every couple of weeks.
Tom LeNoble: 1978 was an extraordinary year in San Francisco. Harvey Milk was in office. The Rainbow Flag debuted. The Briggs Initiative was being fought. By the end of the year, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been assassinated. What did it feel like to be a journalist while history was unfolding around you?
Randy Alfred: It was a year of ups and downs. We beat Briggs. Harvey’s partner, Jack Lira, committed suicide. And then the assassinations happened. There were lots of ups and downs. I and several other journalists in San Francisco were aware of just how unusual and historic the year was going to be. Just keeping up with what was happening was nearly impossible.
Tom LeNoble: Tell me about producing The Gay Life on KSAN-FM. How did that opportunity surface?
Randy Alfred: In 1978, I was contributing to The Gay Life, but I became the producer in January of 1979. The producer of the show, Larry Lee, left KSAN for a job in television as an investigative reporter. The show didn’t have a producer, and I got called just about every month asking when it was going to come back on the air. In December, when I called, they said, “Oh, it’s coming back in January.” And I said, “Great, who’s the producer?” They said, “You’re the producer.” I was suddenly the producer.
Tom LeNoble: Who are some of the people you interviewed who remain with you today?
Randy Alfred: I had an interview that we aired in January of 1982, in the very early days of what became known as AIDS. It wasn’t even named AIDS yet. I had an interview with Bobbi Campbell and interviewed both Drs. (Marcus) Conant and (Paul) Volberding, two of the leading and original researchers here in San Francisco.
We did more than 250 hours of that show over six years, and they’re all available at the Historical Society’s website: https://bit.ly/4xJg9h3
I was going out and recording events in the community; for instance, the debates over whether we should close the bathhouses to reduce the transmission of AIDS (and) Christopher Isherwood’s speech, where he was asked about nomenclature. He didn’t like the word “gay.” He said, “Homosexual is such a mouthful.” He said, “I like the word queer. Queer is good.”
This was in the early 1980s and well ahead of the wave of people beginning to say, yes, we can reclaim that word and make it ours and make it positive and inclusive.
Tom LeNoble: What feedback did you get from listeners about what it meant to hear LGBTQ+ lives and issues openly discussed on the radio?
Randy Alfred: The most telling thing was that I would hear from people in rural areas who didn’t have access. It was an entrée into what was going on here in San Francisco and going on in the East Bay.
The Stanislaus County Gay Alliance from the Central Valley sent me public service announcements to read, because the show was a public service show. They told me, “We don’t have a newspaper out here. We don’t have media. This is the way people connect.” And, for some of them, it was the first time that they heard about other people like them, that they were not alone.
The media was not covering lesbians. Lesbians didn’t have role models out there, people whom they knew, like, “Oh, I’m not the only one,” and [this was also the case for] people of color. [It also was true for] people who did not look like the well-groomed, well-dressed, sleek Manhattanite or San Francisco image of this is what gay culture is about.
Tom LeNoble: In 1980, you investigated the CBS Reports program Gay Power, Gay Politics. Your work contributed to CBS issuing a rare public apology. What troubled you about the broadcast?
Randy Alfred: The broadcast—and I’m glad you used the word broadcast, because, in my mind, it wasn’t a documentary—it was a hit job.
To put that forward, they used deceitful editing practices. For instance, when Mayor Feinstein apologized during a hard political campaign, she apologized for remarks she had made in the Ladies’ Home Journal about “gays must set standards for themselves.” She did not receive applause when she said it at the Alice B. Toklas Political Memorial Democratic Club meeting.
Later, when she said that she would appoint a lesbian or gay police commissioner, that received applause. They edited that to make it seem as if the apology for her remarks about standards had gotten applause.
Similarly, in a speech that Cleve Jones gave on the anniversary of the assassinations in November of 1978, where he talked about the ability to walk down the street without fear of being beaten up, they took applause and put it after his line, “the ability to walk down the streets holding hands.”
It was deceitful. It gave journalists a bad reputation.
I submitted it to the National News Council and said that the show tended to demean, disgrace, and dishonor the entire journalistic profession. We said these are not acceptable practices.
CBS apologized. The on-air apology wound up running on my birthday that year, which made me quite happy.
Tom LeNoble: Are there lessons from LGBTQ+ journalism in the 1970s and 1980s that journalists need to remember today?
Randy Alfred: There are lessons that good journalists should remember always, which is an absolute respect for the truth and a high regard for the human dignity of every person whom they interview or cover.
The entire history of journalism in America has been one of increasing the scope of people about whom you couldn’t lie. Before LGBTQ people, especially in the South, newspapers and radio and TV felt free to lie about Black people. And before that, they were lying about Jews. And, before that, they were lying about immigrants of any stripe.
Tom LeNoble: Tell me about your relationship with Leroy “Roy” Aarons and your involvement in the founding of NLGJA.
Randy Alfred: At the time, I was on the board of Media Alliance, which was a group of progressive journalists who got together for mutual support. A fledgling organization called NLGJA asked if Media Alliance could be the fiscal sponsor of the new organization. I was the openly gay man on the board, and there was at least one open lesbian. It was thought that I should be the liaison to the new organization.
I met Leroy Aarons. I started going to the board meetings of NLGJA, not as a board member but as the liaison for Media Alliance.
I’m not the executive type. I’m the facilitative type and provided a form of what I like to call facilitative leadership. I’m good at supporting the leadership and making sure that things can run smoothly. And that was the role I wound up playing on the early board of NLGJA. Roy said, “If you join the first year, you’re a co-founder.”
Tom LeNoble: You were inducted into the NLGJA Hall of Fame in 2015. What did that mean to you?
Randy Alfred: It was a pleasure and a delight. It was an honor. It was a wonderful party to support the organization. I bought a whole lot of extra tickets to the final night’s party where I was going to be inducted. I had an entourage, even, which isn’t something I’ve indulged in other times.
Tom LeNoble: What makes the mission of NLGJA relevant today?
Randy Alfred: We want all media—mainstream media, community media, our own LGBTQ+ media—to provide fair and accurate coverage. There are the newsroom issues of equal employment opportunities for hiring and advancement for LGBTQ people. It’s important to have a social network that can provide support for journalists.
An important newsroom project is having guidance, a style book to help journalists use the right language—no slurs, no lies, and no double standards. [There should be] no double standard in coverage and promotions in the newsroom.
Tom LeNoble: What do you think your generation understood that you hope younger journalists don’t forget?
Randy Alfred: In the movie Milk, it opens with a bar raid of the late 1950s, early 1960s. I’d forgotten that, when I came out, half the people I met still had lived in the era of bar raids, police coming in and busting up pre-Stonewall. Everything I knew about quote-unquote homosexuals was that they got busted and blackmailed and had careers ruined.
I think that’s important to still remember, and it’s important to remember that Pride was once a protest march, or as they point out, Stonewall was a riot.
I think the important thing for people to realize is how diverse a community we are and to be, not merely tolerant, but accepting of one another.
Tom LeNoble: Is there a story from those early years that people rarely ask you about?
Randy Alfred: I have an even earlier story.
I’m one of those people who knows when he went into the closet, as well as when he came out. Around the time I was eight, I received specific instructions. It wasn’t good for me to hug male friends. It was okay if they were cousins or uncles. I wasn’t supposed to be in playgroups where I was the only boy and the others were all girls, because people would think I was a sissy.
I stopped writing poetry. It was only after I came out of the closet, around age 26, 27, that I was writing poetry again. I went back and discovered that I stopped around age eight. Age eight is also when I stopped being a scrawny little kid and became a nervous, chubby overeater. I know when I went into the closet as well as when I came out. It’s an unusual story.
Tom LeNoble: Randy, after everything you’ve witnessed and helped change, what gives you hope about the future of LGBTQ+ journalism?
Randy Alfred: The hope is that we’ve found each other, and we’re organized, and we’re bringing up the younger generation. I’ve been a mentor in the NLGJA mentor program. We’ve also made connections with other minority groups like the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. There’s also a Native American journalists association [Indigenous Journalists Association]. There’s a Trans Journalists Association.
There are three verbs that I think sum up the longer mission statement: connect, support, communicate. The rate of acceptance and how high people have risen in the last 35 years is heartening. I’m more worried about the future of journalism, let alone the future of LGBTQ+ journalists within that.
Tom LeNoble is an international speaker, confidential advisor, and resilience strategist who works with leaders navigating meaningful inflection points in life and leadership. He has held senior leadership roles at MCI, Walmart.com, Palm, and Facebook, and high growth startups. He is the author of the award-winning memoir “My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns, and High Heels.” Through speaking, coaching, and writing, he explores resilience, leadership, and the choices that shape how we show up for others and for the communities we serve. https://www.tomlenoble.com/
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