[Magazines] Where'd ICON Go?

The 404 error shouldn't be all too unfamiliar to surfers of the web like you. Technically it shows up when the page you're looking for cannot be found - perhaps you mistyped or the page itself is missing. Some web masters make their 404 errors interesting, while some leave things as the default. I know I do.

Well, I think it's safe to say for now that ICON Magazine has gone 404 on us, in a manner of speaking.

Okay, so technically you don't get a 404 error when you visit the site. You get prompted for a username and password and when you fail to provide that, you end up with a "You are not authorized to view this page" message, but that's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that ICON has been pretty quiet recently...perhaps too quiet.

My entry about ICON Magazine going bi-monthly remains one of my top posts and no month goes by where it doesn't draw in traffic, so I know that there are people looking for the magazine. Some time back I mentioned on my personal blog that I had gotten a stint as a contributing writer for the magazine, and I was pretty excited about it. My music reviews and my feature article were supposed to come out in the July-August issue.

It's October and the issue isn't out. Perhaps it won't be for a long time.

You see, I've been sitting on this news for some time in the hopes that the people behind the magazine would make an official statement. Perhaps they well, I don't really know. However I think it needs to be mad clear, to some respect, what's going on.

The last word I got from my editor is that they were going through some significant changes at the magazine and would be going on a hiatus for a while. How long this hiatus is supposed to be, he couldn't say. I doubt he even knew himself, and I can't blame him. He sounded pretty worried for the future of the magazine and that was pretty much that.

So if you really feel strongly about the magazine, it might help to extend some words of kind support. I'm not sure if it's going to do something, but it doesn't hurt to try, right? Maybe I should start a petition or something - they seem to be all the rage these days...

Well, that's all I know for now. I really hope they come back. This is not just about me wanting to get published - this is more about my support for the magazine and what it stands for, a voice for the local LGBT community in a culture that sees us only in terms of our extremes, the beauty salon technicians and all the gratuitous sex we're supposed to be getting ourselves mixed-up in. ICON helped show that we're also intelligent and that we feel strongly about issues as well and it helped promote advocacy and what exactly we stand for.

And now it might not come back.


Photo linked from swgm's photostream.