Gay News to provide '77 info

The 1976 Almanacs: gays are still (mostly) out of sight, out of mind

by Richard Rusinow

One thing the turn of the year regularly brings with it is publication of new editions of those compendiums of news, knowledge. and notoriety called "almanacs." This year, in view of the ever-increasing acceptance of gays and the several important gay-related news events during 1975, the Gay News decided to examine how well the popular reference works covered our side of the street.

The examination focused on three national publications the Information Please Almanac, the CBS News Almanac, and the World Almanac and Book of Facts (with local agents in Cleveland-Akron and Pittsburgh) and one of the last (and best) of the regional ones -Philadelphia's Bulletin Almanac. The results were pretty un-satisfying, since in 3,656 pages in the four volumes, there were exactly two references to gays in the news and only one to homosexuality in general. However, all the editors we spoke with were cooperative in discussing their policies and seemed receptive to the idea of increasing their coverage of gays and gayrelated news.

Following is a volume-byvolume run-down on what we looked for, what we found, and, for the most part, what we didn't find in these 3.656 pages.

CBS News Almanac, Laurence Urdane editor-in-chief. (Maplewood. N.J.: Hammond, Inc.) 1.040 pages.

Successor, corporately if not editorially, to the now-defunct New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac, the CBS News Almanac is the largest of the four. With the imprimatur of the prestigious CBS News organization, it might also be expected to be the most authoritative.

Unfortunately, this is not exactly the case.

The 1974-75 chronology mentions none of the major news stories involving gays: the Air Force's discharge of T/Sgt. Leonard

Matlovich, Pa. Gov. Shapp's

"schizophrenia," and "castration anxiety" was--you guessed it-"homosexuality." The American Psychiatric Association is cited in the almanac as the authority or these terms, but in 1973 the APA voted to delete homosexuality from its listing of psychiatric disorders. The definition given does not achomosexuality tually call psychiatric disorder, yet its mere inclusion under this heading would suggest to the uninformed reader that it is one. It is something like listing "Negro" under "Legal Terms."

a

We spoke with Martin A. Bacheller, the almanac's editorial coordinator, about coverage of gayrelated news. He told us that the September 19 date of the Matlovich discharge-clearly the splashiest (if not necessarily the most important) such story during the year-was "too close to our deadline" for information about it to be included. "A good deal of the stuff for September got pulled due to space," he added.

But Bacheller agreed that an abstract of major news items prepared especailly for the almanacs by the Gay News would be "extremely helpful" to him in preparing next year's edition.

Information Please Almanac, Ann Golenpaul, editor, (New York: Dan Golenpaul Associates) 992 pages.

Whether in spite or because of its rather home-spun flavor, the Information Please Almanac is still. one of the most-used publications of its kind in the country. And

THE

INFORMAT OCB

PLEASE ALMANA Atlas and Yearb

BULLETIN ALMANA

ALMA ALMAN 197

somewhat surprisingly, it contains

one of the two news references to gays that we found.

No, it wasn't the discharges of Matlovich, Randolph, or Watson: the death of Dr. Brown; the arrest of Susan Saxe; or Gov. Shapp's April 23 Executive Order. What the Information Please Almanac considered newsworthy in 1975 was the fact that Oliver Sipple is gay and. that he has brought a $15 million suit against the publications that disclosed this following his saving of President Ford's life.

Like the CBS News Almanac, the Information Please Almanac does not include the National Gay

Task Force in its directory of

B

1976

Photo by Harry Eberlin

associations. And also similarly, deadline pressure was cited as the reason for making no mention at least of the Matlovich discharge. "We probably were getting ready to go to press at the time it happened and just couldn't include it," Ruth Graham, the almanac's production editor, told the Gay News. She also agreed that an abstract of gayrelated news events for the year would be valuable. "Certainly there was no anti-gay feeling on our part in handling the chronology," she said.

World Almanac and Book of Facts, George E. Delury, editor. (New York and Cleveland: Newspaper Enterprise Assoc., Inc.)

984 pages.

Perhaps the most respected of the national almanacs, the World Almanac is also the oldest. Originally published in 1868 and published. annually since 1886, the World Almanac is prepared for local

as

distribution through area newspapers such the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Press, the Akron BeaconJournal, etc.

For all its pages of information, however, the World Almanac contains only one reference to a gayoriented news item: the Matlovich discharge. Considering the extensive media. coverage this received, it is not surprising that the World Almanac chose to include it in its chronology. The surprising thing is that none of the other almanacs did so. As editor Delury commented to the Gay News, "(the Matlovich discharge) was certainly the most publicized event in 1975 involving homosexuality."

Delury, who has been editor of the World Almanac since 1972, agreed that coverage of gays in the various almanacs was probably. "inadequate," but explained: "The space limitations are severe, and although we read a large number of newspapers and news magazines from all over the country, we just can't include everything we'd like to." He also said that he was "not aware" of the Shapp executive order, but "I would certainly have considered (including it) if I had known about it."

(Continued on Page A7)

Executive Order, the death of Dr. Howard Brown, the arrest of radical lesbian-feminist Susan Saxe, the Women's Army Corps' discharge of Barbara Randolph and Debbie Watcan the coming-out of Minnesota state senator Allan Spear, or the disclosure that Uiver Sipple, who. foiled Sara Jane Moore's attempt to assassinate President Ford, is gay.

Checking the almanac's listing of societies and associations in the U.S., we found the Air Pollution Control Assn., the American Power Boat Assn., the Helicopter Assn: of America, the National Hay Fever Relief Assn., and the Save-theRedwoods League all worthy organizations, no doubt--but not the, National Gay Task Force, the largest and perhaps most important gay civil rights group in the country. We did, however, find one reference to homosexuality in the CBS News Almanac, though it turned out to be at best misleading and at worst offensive. Under the heading "Psychiatric Terms," right along with "paranoid state,"

Hours:

Mon.-Sat. 5 pm to 2:30 am Sun.--9 pm to 2:30 am

Page A6-OHIO EAST GAY NEWS-Saturday, March 6, 1976

A 99st-017092157V01

-31 YAD ICAJ UIRC

After Dark Cocktail Lounge

13111 Broadway Ave. 662-6615

Happy Hour

Cocktails and hors d'oeurves Mon.Sat. 5-9