News - Window Media, who publish a number of gay newspapers throughout the USA, including the oldest at 40 years - The Washington Blade - has declared that it has closed down.

Other publications to suffer include the Southern Voice and David in Altanta, the South Florida Blade and 411 in Fort Lauderdale and the Houston Voice.

Window has been in financial trouble for some time, and was placed in receivership by the Small Business Association in February because it violated it's contract with the SBA and didn't have capital from individual investors equaling half of the $38 million it had borrowed from SBA.

The staff were said to have bid to take it over last Summer, but now faced with the prospect of unemployment, they have finally taken the leap and announced that they will relaunch under a new name, possibly this week. Former editor Kevin Naff told the Washington Post: "'We're united and determined to make a go of it as an independent company."

It's also bad news for Regent/Here staff at HIV plus and The Advocate who have laid off 24% of their staff, and look set to enter even more turbulent times.

Yes, this is another example of businesses hit by the tough economic climate, but gay publications have been facing extinction for some time. All newspapers are desperately trying to figure out how to avoid giving away their content for free, and how to embrace technology like Twitter which disseminates news updates by the second.

Gay consumers have generally been ahead of the game, especially when it came to the internet - we were using it to hook up while other people were still setting up their emails. So inevitably, newspapers were going to give way to websites, it's just that now is the right time to make the permanent leap.