LPI Media

LPI Media (formerly Liberation Publications Inc.) is the largest gay and lesbian publisher in the United States. The company targets LGBT communities and publishes such media as, magazines, books, and web sites, with its magazines alone having more than 8.2 million copies distributed each year. The Advocate and Out magazines are the two largest circulation LGBT magazines in the United States, each with corresponding websites; Advocate.com and OUT.com, respectively.

Additional publications include Out Traveler, HIV Plus, and LGBT penned titles through Alyson Books making it the "largest publisher of gay and lesbian print publications" and thus the largest print voice of the LGBT communities, including transgender and to a lesser degree bisexual people.

They are also parent owners of Specialty Publications, which produces adult (pornography) publications MEN, formerly Advocate Men, FreshMen, Unzipped, and [2]. Specialty Publications is one of the largest gay adult erotica web and video production companies in the world.

History
Liberation Publications began with a police raid at the Black Cat bar in Los Angeles in 1966 prompting a handful of gay men to start a mimeographed sheet newsletter for the gay community which grew into The Advocate magazine the following year and remained the only national LGBT magazine for nearly twenty-five years.

In February of 2000, Liberation acquired Out Publishing Inc. which publishes Out and HIV Plus magazines. Then president and chief executive of Liberation, James Franklin, said the deal would "move the print properties into the electronic arena." and added that the Internet was popular with gay and lesbian readers because of the closet factor. PlanetOut attempted in March 2000 to merge with LPI, but it was called off in March 2001.

Out Traveler, a magazine spin-off of Out launched in 2003.

In November 2005 LPI merged with Planet Out, which mainly has developed online properties to become the world's largest media company targeting the LGBT communities. LPI's "solid accounts list of fashion, retail and consumer packaged goods advertisers" was cited amongst the strong selling points. Criticism of the merger has centered on two aspects; that a consolidation of national media outlets of a minority community is unlikely to add diversity of voices and that the publications were established and supported in an effort to secure human rights for gays and lesbians but now are instead delivering a market share to corporations.

In April, 2008, the magazines published by LPI as well as the porn magazines published by Specialty Publications were sold by PlanetOut to Regent Releasing, which owns here!, a cable television network catering to LGBT audiences.

The Advocate
The Advocate, "the (LGBT) community's leading national news source since 1967." It is the oldest continuing gay publication in the United States with the website for the magazine containing approximately thirty percent of the print issue online and is updated daily. First published by Dick Michaels and Bill Rand, of the Los Angeles activist group PRIDE in Los Angeles in 1967 as The Los Angeles Advocate, it was renamed The Advocate in 1969 and distributed nationally. David Goodstein, an investment banker from San Francisco, bought the publication in 1974 instituting several changes to the publication fully transforming it into a national news magazine covering events important to the LGBT community, including the gay rights movement, art and culture. Goldstein's later editorials reflected his years as a participant in the LGBT community's fight for civil liberties. Soon after Goodstein's death 1985, the magazine changed hands through acquisitions, and is currently published by LPI Media, a division of PlanetOut Inc.

Out
Out, a "popular lifestyle magazine that celebrates the spirit of gay culture, including fashion and style, trends, society, and the arts", was founded by Michael Goff in 1992. A key ingredient in Out's success in attracting mainstream and high-end advertisers who had never considered targeting the LGBT market was the magazine's offering of a safe environment in which no adult material or personal classifieds were published. By removing this barrier, advertisers were comfortable to utilize this new national print media vehicle to reach a marginalized audience and effectively showcase their products and services. With the advertising revenue Out was able to secure world-class writers and contributors such as writers Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Dale Peck, Dan Savage, Mark Simpson, Michael Joseph Gross, Normal Bob Smith,  and photographers such as Ben Watts. In less than two years, Out circulation and scope of advertisers surpassed that of then forty-year-old The Advocate, then the only other national gay magazine. Out has the highest circulation of any gay monthy publication in the United States and carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details and GQ.

HIV Plus
HIV Plus magazine is based in Los Angeles and was founded by Anne-christine D'Adesky in 1998. Instead of subscriptions the "national magazine [is] distributed at doctors' offices and organizations offering services for people with AIDS" including AIDS service organizations, HIV community-based groups, and physicians’ offices as well as some other qualifying groups and organizations Offering "the latest stories on research, economics, and treatment" HIV Plus provides "news that raises awareness of HIV-related cultural and policy developments in the United States and throughout the world" including issues of "cultural stereotypes about incarceration, drug use, and HIV".

I was the AIDS and Health Editor at OUT Magazine for a couple of years, and I found that the scientific information I needed to report was getting increasingly complex. While there was a small group of long-time activists who had amassed a lot of technical expertise, the vast majority of my readers didn't have this background, and many of them needed to be making treatment decisions for themselves. So I started HIV Plus in 1998, to address this gap. During my tenure as editor, I tried to provide state-of-the-art science reporting that was accessible at different levels, so that anyone who cared could become engaged, and have some say in the ongoing dialogue. -- Anne-christine D'Adesky

Notable writers and contributors include photographer Steve Azzara, contributing fitness editor Sam Jensen Page, columnist LeRoy Whitfield whose "Native Tongue" column ran in HIV Plus magazine since May 2004 and was "one of the magazine's most popular features".

Alyson Publications
Alyson Books is a publisher founded in Boston, Massachusetts by Sasha Alyson which specializes in feminist and LGBT fiction and nonfiction. Notable books and authors published by Alyson include: Young, Gay and Proud; the Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon series, by Alison Bechdel; Melting Point, Doing it for Daddy, Macho Sluts and Doc and Fluff by Pat Califia; Latter Days, novelization by T. Fabris for the 2003 major motion picture of the same name; The Femme Mystique and Pillow Talk edited by Lesléa Newman; Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology; Love, Bourbon Street: Reflections of New Orleans winner 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Anthology; Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka'ahumanu and The Bisexual's Guide to the Universe, winner 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual category.

Specialty Publications
LPI Media is the parent company of Specialty Publications, an American publisher of adult gay erotic and pornography publications. Their Men magazine (formerly Advocate Men) has been the top-selling gay male erotic magazine for over 25 years, and tends to portray men aged 25 to 40. Freshmen is an American erotic magazine published monthly since 1991 and is geared toward gay and bisexual men features photos of men aged 18-30 years old. Freshmen has long been the best-seller in its genre and features top-line male porn models from Bel Ami, Falcon, and others; Freshmen specializes in young but not twinkish men, primarily 18 to 25 but some to age 30. Other items, such as calendars and playing cards, are also published using the same label. "Freshman of the Year" contests are held with many fledgling porn stars going on to greater success including Sebastian Bonnet, Roman Heart, Dick McKay, Zack Randall, Marcus Allen,, and Billy Brandt. Specialty Publications also produces Unzipped, and [2] making it one of the largest gay adult erotica web and video production companies in the world.