“I regret that I wasn’t more out all
along. I regret that I didn’t do
more talking about being gay.”
— Jeff Schmalz
embrace gay rights at a
sudden pace. What some
had called the Lavender
Enlightenment at The
New York Times continued at the paper and
other media outlets. The
Times became a leader on
coverage of LGBT issues
as well as a leader among
media companies.
Last week, 20 years
after the article was first
published, I moderated
a discussion at The New
York Times about the article and its impact, with
a panel that included The
Times’ openly gay op-ed
columnist, Frank Bruni,
as well as two of the interview subjects in the
1992 story, photographer
Sarah Krulwich, and former editor Richard Meislin. Even two decades
later, the fear that Rosenthal, who died six years
ago, had instilled seemed
palpable. Panelists and
audience members described a newsroom in
the 1980s punctuated often by yelling and screaming, and a workplace that
was hostile to women and
minorities, including gays
and lesbians.
Krulwich said it was
not uncommon to find
women weeping in the
ladies room. She often
had to drive female colleagues around the block,
taking a break with a box
of tissues in the car. One
member of the audience,
a gay man who’d been
with the paper for several decades, described
how Rosenthal queried
him on whether or not he
was married, while interviewing him for the job.
When the man said no,
Rosenthal, said, “But you
are going to get married,
right?” He knew that if
he said no, he wouldn’t
get the job, and so he
lied. It took him years
after Rosenthal stepped
down as executive editor
to finally come