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When Renee Raketty became the publisher of the Seattle Gay News in June 2024, “it was probably the easiest transfer of ownership … in Seattle in a long time,” she said.
Then-publisher Mike Schultz — who now publishes Stonewall News Northwest — was moving out of town and offered to sell Raketty the paper. The offer came over email, she said, and the rest was just paperwork, meetings, and finally a celebratory dinner.
At first, she couldn’t believe it was reality. Raketty, who for over two decades has worked for the outlet as a contributing writer and then a managing editor, said the idea of publishing the paper had never crossed her mind.
“[Given] when I started here, to imagine I’d be a publisher one day is really mind-blowing,” Raketty said.
From 2001 to 2024, Raketty had worked under three publishers: longtime owner George Bakan, then, after his passing, his daughter Angela Cragin, and finally Schultz.
“They're all highly qualified and all just excellent people in their own way and brought so many different gifts to this paper,” Raketty said. “I feel honored knowing all of them and having a chance to work under all three of them, because I've learned something different from each one.”
A storied history
The SGN is over 50 years old now, and though it’s been through crises before — “ When people tell me that this paper is gonna close, I laugh, because … I've heard that so many times,” Raketty joked — it’s also been there for Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community through some of the city’s darkest times.
“ It's amazing to me to be at the helm of a newspaper that's been around 51 years,” Raketty said. “We've really covered the ups and downs of our community. When we started, it was still illegal to have Gay sex in Seattle. Our first office was firebombed. And … I’ve received so many death threats over the years, and unfortunately that’s increasing again, mostly because I happen to be Transgender.”
When the AIDS crisis hit Seattle, the SGN was the first to report on it, Raketty said.
“We were sharing the first public health information. Once we found what this thing was, we were the first to put up safer sex messaging,” Raketty said. “We actually ran our own safe sex pamphlet in our paper, because back then, the Reagan administration wasn’t even mentioning the words ‘HIV’ or ‘AIDS.’”
“During those days, so many of our readers, so many of our staff, so many of our people … were just dying left and right due to the HIV/AIDS crisis,” Raketty added. “We would report their names in our paper free of charge.”
She described attending presentations on the SGN’s 50-year anniversary and hearing from long-time readers who told her that back in those days, they found out their friend died from reading the paper. One story that struck her was from a person who was a child during the early days of the crisis.
“Their uncle had disappeared, and no one would talk about it,” Raketty said. “As an adult, they searched their uncle’s name and found the obituary in our paper. It was closure for them.”
The SGN’s history is part of what makes the paper so special. So under Schultz, every issue dating back to its origination in 1974 was digitally archived in high-definition color. They can be accessed from the SGN’s website.
When Raketty thinks about the paper’s past, and about the moments in her career she’s proudest of, it’s the stories with impact.
“ I remember one story I wrote about hate crimes in Seattle,” she said. “One of many, unfortunately, was about straight guy who got gay-bashed outside Hattie’s Hat, and the story itself led to the city attorney’s office conducting a study of hate crimes in Seattle, which led to a whole big project. I [also] remember writing about a campaign in Tacoma and learning that the campaign manager actually couldn’t vote and reporting on that, and I think that did impact the outcome of the election.
“I was so honored that my work has impacted people in such important ways. Often when we write these articles, we don't really know the impact immediately, but it's kind of fun to look back on what happened as a result of the work you did.”
She also remembers watching, and writing about, history in the making: Seattle’s first civil unions, and later, the first legal marriages between same-sex couples.
“It’s a memory I hold very dear to my heart,” Raketty said.
This past year
In her first year as publisher, Raketty has made bold moves. She launched Gay sports coverage and hired a dedicated sports reporter. She’s sent reporters to cover protests, not just in Seattle but around the country.
“We actually had a reporter in New York covering a protest in Bryant Park,” Raketty said.
She’s working to grow the outlet’s social media presence and traffic, and with reporters to develop “thought-provoking, investigative pieces.”
Being bold in the publishing business is risky, Raketty said. “We’ve invested a lot of money into making these changes, and it’s kind of a crap shoot.”
But with a dedicated staff, the paper’s 51-year-history, and her own two decades of experience, she believes they’re well on their way to making the paper relevant for the next 51 years.
Her first year hasn’t all been rainbows and Queer joy, however.
Raketty took the reins in June 2024, and by November, Donald Trump had been reelected. In January, he was inaugurated, and from day one, flooded the zone with anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
“I was so surprised by the level of brutality right out of the gate from this administration,” Raketty said. “I was expecting a slower rollout of anti-LGBTQ policies, but nope. The first day, they got to it.”
Quickly, the Trump administration impacted not just the community served by the SGN but Raketty herself: as a Trans woman, she struggled to get a passport that reflected her identity.
Federal policy has cast a shadow on the second half of her first year as publisher, but Raketty feels the responsibility of her role, and she’s meeting the moment.
“ I feel like I'm the right person at the right time for this paper,” Raketty said. “I’ve been there at so many integral [points for] our community, and I've seen the progress firsthand. I've seen the efforts that went into making that progress happen, the people behind the scenes, and the hard work it involves. I have firsthand knowledge of who we are and why we should be proud of who we are and why we should fight to keep who we are.”
Raketty views the SGN’s responsibility not as a neutral observer but as a community connector and mobilizer.
“With the Trump administration basically seeking to erase LGBTQ people from public life and legal existence, I think it’s more important now that the paper use its voice to speak up, talk back, and mobilize our community as it has done historically,” she said.
“ We've seen attempts to erase Trans people from history before,” she added. “We've seen attempts to erase, erase Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual people from history before. They were never successful. They will not be successful.
“But I have to be honest: painful times are ahead. I think all you can do is get outta bed every day and just go to work and continue to do the work you do, because it's so important.
“We just can't give up or give in when a new bully arrives on the horizon. It doesn't matter if they’re at the helm of the federal government or they’re in your backyard. We need to stand up for each other, and fight back, and we need to be there for other minority communities and their struggles as well.”
The future
Envisioning a future for the LGBTQ+ community and the SGN under some brutal federal policies has required bravery and creative thinking from Raketty, informed by the SGN’s past.
“ This year we're sticking our heads out again by interviewing and endorsing candidates for public office,” she said. “This is a time where we gotta hold our elected leaders and policy makers to account and hold their feet to the fire when it comes to standing up for marginalized members of our community.”
She’s also made steps to rekindle connection and activism by reviving the SGN’s community calendar, both on the website and in a one-page print insert, and by building alliances with other minority communities, so as to stand strong in the face of the Trump administration.
And much of SGN’s future continues on the path set by her mentor Bakan and previous publishers.
“We’re trying to continue to use our journalistic integrity to report the news for our community, asking those tough questions that a lot of influencers wouldn’t ask of our leaders,” Raketty said.
The SGN is going to continue to call out misinformation perpetuated by the political right and politicians trying to score political points, make money, and stay in power by throwing Queer people under the bus.
“When I became publisher, we changed the [motto] of our paper to ‘Pride over fear since 1974,’” Raketty said. “This paper has been the bulwark of resistance, organizing, and leadership for our community … I will do everything in my power to make sure that the rights those who came before me fought for will be maintained. We will come back from this momentary difficulty, and we’ll come back stronger.”
