Stepping into the Viking Union Gallery at Western Washington University, the white walls display a collection of headlines from past issues published by the Seattle Gay News (SGN).
The topics on display range from popular culture, travel, education and legislative moments.
On Jan. 14, the gallery hosted a reception with guest speaker and SGN publisher Renee Raketty, opening the event.
"Whether it’s the heartbreaking obituaries during the AIDS crisis, the joyous celebrations of Pride or the sobering accounts of hate crimes and discriminations, the SGN has captured it all," she said.
Archives of the past five decades of the SGN hang proudly on the gallery walls, which provides ample reading opportunities on their progress as a paper.
Three posters display past issues and a crossword printed by the SGN at the Viking Union Gallery on Jan. 14, 2025, in Bellingham, Wash. Smaller prints of the crossword were available for guests to complete. // Photo by McKenna Kilayko
"It's so cool to see how long-running the SGN is and that they've been documenting, representing and supporting the queer community in Washington for so long," Western second-year Jacqueline Ojeda Mendez said.
The idea to archive the print issues of the SGN came from a video on King5, the Seattle news station, which showed piles upon piles of past issues of the SGN from former SGN owner, George Bakan, who died in 2020.
SGN staff member Rick McKinnon was contacted by former Seattle Public Libraries CEO and Chief Librarian Marcellus Turner to help assist in the effort to archive the papers.
McKinnon explained in an email that the process of archiving past issues of the SGN involved microfilm, a compact way to store items like newspapers and other documents.
“Jessica Albano at UW Libraries and her library student employees did a painstaking review of all of the UW's microfilm of the SGN to make sure they had a complete run of each year and, in the process, identified a few gaps that they are hoping to fill in,” he wrote.
What started as a small collection of microfilm from the University of Washington Libraries has slowly grown as more issues are collected to fill in the gaps from the start of the paper in 1974 to the present.
“We had been preserving the SGN on microfilm for some time, but the multi-institution effort to rescue George Bakan’s print issues of the SGN provided an awesome opportunity to fill gaps in the UW Libraries holdings,” Albano wrote in an email.
She wrote that microfilming allowed UW Libraries to distribute runs of the SGN to other institutions. They were also able to provide free access through the Washington State Library’s Washington Digital Newspapers website, ensuring that SGN’s LGBTQ+ history would be accessible to anyone.
Current back-issues available can also be read on this site.
Since the first newsletters came out of the Seattle Gay Community Center in 1974, the SGN has covered topics like HIV and AIDS and legislative moments like the 1978 defeat of Initiative 13.
"When it came to important issues like HIV and AIDS, we were the first paper to repeatedly report on [it]. We provided life-saving information to LGBTQ people," Raketty said.
A stack of commemorative SGN newspapers at the reception in the Viking Union Gallery on Jan. 14, 2025, in Bellingham, Wash. The bright colors greet viewers as they enter. // Photo by McKenna Kilayko
The SGN has adapted and evolved with the rapidly changing environment around it. It is one of the longest-running LGBTQ+ newspapers in the world, continuously making the effort to uphold its mission of fighting for equality, she said.
“I hope our efforts bring new readers to the SGN during this time of great uncertainty for the LGBTQ+ community and when it is more important than ever to connect people with facts and quality journalism,” Albano wrote.
That sense of uncertainty resonates with Raketty, who finds hope in the legacy of the SGN.
"We're going into a time where our right to exist will be challenged again with the next federal administration. It's good to know that we came together in the past,” Raketty said. “We were successful at obtaining our victories. And no matter what defeats we have over the next four more years, we're going to succeed again."
Note: If you have a collection of print issues of the SGN (big or small), please leave your name and email or phone number with the Viking Union Gallery staff, as per SGN staff member Rick McKinnon.
McKenna Kilayko (she/her) is a campus life reporter for The Front. She is in her second year at Western, working towards majoring in Journalism with a minor in French. You can often find her drinking an iced matcha latte, DJing for Western’s radio station, KUGS, or complaining about the lack of sun. You can contact her at mckennakilayko.thefront@gmail.com.
