Seattle Gay News’ new owner Renee Raketty on community, influences (2024)

Renee Raketty has worn a number of hats in her years with Seattle Gay News as contributing writer, staff writer and managing editor. In July, she’s donning a new one as the paper celebrates its 50th anniversary: owner.

After nearly a decade at SGN and a long history of involvement with local LGBTQ+ organizations, Raketty, a lifelong Pacific Northwesterner, announced in late May that she will be officially taking stewardship of the LGBTQ+ news and entertainment publication. Raketty, 46, first started working for SGN in October 2001 as a writer and became managing editor in August 2005.

After a brief departure from journalism, Raketty returned to SGN in 2020 after the death of the newspaper’s longtime editor and owner George Bakan. After his passing, Bakan’s daughter, Angela Cragin, took over and ran the newsroom until SGN was sold to Mike Schultz’s Stratus Group in 2023. When Schultz announced plans to relocate to California to be closer to family, Raketty stepped up to lead the paper.

“I cut my teeth in journalism writing for the Seattle Gay News. I felt really connected to the community,” Raketty said of her decision to acquire the paper. “I’ve always loved this paper. It holds a really big part of my heart.”

Schultz officially transferred the paper’s ownership to Raketty’s Prism Pride Press, which will go into effect at midnight June 30. Stratus Group will lose rights to SGN’s intellectual property at the end of the month, but continue to retain the rights to the newspaper’s archives.

Under Bakan’s leadership, SGN published a weekly print paper, which later changed to a bimonthly edition after Schultz took over. Under Raketty, SGN will publish a monthly print magazine.

The Seattle Times spoke to Raketty about what this new era means for her and SGN, as well as her biggest influences and inspirations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was it important for you to acquire Seattle Gay News?

I really respect what it takes to put this paper together as a staff writer, as a managing editor, and again, as editor. … I really learned what it means to the community and what it would mean to lose an institution in our community — an institution that has spanned five decades. I feel like I have the necessary skills to bring the paper forward. I think two people can really say they love this paper as much as I do, and I’m proud to be one of them.

What does it mean for you to be the first transgender person to lead the paper?

I don’t believe that even Jim Tully and Jim Arnold — when they [founded SGN] as a newsletter for the gay community center on 16th Avenue in Seattle — could have imagined that one day a trans individual would be [the] publisher of the paper. There was a great deal of controversy around incorporating bisexual and transgender into the name of the Pride March back in the ’90s. … Locally, there weren’t many well-known trans individuals.

It is, I think, an evolution of the paper to see it go from cisgender men, although they were LGBT, to a woman, a cis-heterosexual woman, to a gay man, and then now, a transgender woman. Like, what an evolution! And it’s such an honor to see that happen. I think it speaks to the progress that our community has made.

When did you know you wanted to be a journalist?

I was writing for my high school newspaper at Newport High School in Bellevue. I was introduced to The Mirror newspaper, which was a teen newspaper published by The Seattle Times back in the day.

Lynn Jacobson [now managing editor of The Seattle Times] was very supportive of all the young people that were associated with the paper. And while doing that, I had the opportunity to meet [civil rights leader] Rosa Parks. I had an opportunity to shadow a veteran journalist at KOMO. I met Olympic hopefuls.

[Jacobson] also introduced me to some of my early musical influences, and I went on the radio talking about the [Mirror] with her. So, I think she, above all else, probably influenced me to go into journalism.

What keeps you going in this line of work?

I think it’s always about telling a good story, letting the community know about someone and the work that they’re doing and how it might be impacting their lives. But you know, there’s so many people that [audiences] don’t hear about who are really doing good work and deserve to be recognized.

And there’s a lot that’s changed for the LGBTQ community and it’s nice to document those changes, although it wasn’t really my intent back in the day [as a SGN staff writer] to document historical events for the LGBTQ community. I later learned some of the events that I documented were the only record that exists and I’ve seen my work cited like in research papers across the country. So that’s pretty awesome.

It’s really cool to know that my work is now in the Yale Library, and it’s at the Stonewall [National] Museum [in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.] and it’s archived at the Washington State Library and the University of Washington and the Seattle Public Library.

How do you want to be remembered?

We made the editorial decision for me to cover the George Floyd protests in 2020. So I just happened to be [on] Capitol Hill, covering the developments that day. And unfortunately, I was injured by a blast ball thrown by an officer while I was behind police lines and I was the only person there, so, it raised a lot of questions.

Then I was asked by the ACLU to join a federal lawsuit against the city of Seattle for the use of police munitions, and supposedly, nonlethal munitions. I submitted a declaration in that lawsuit that was seen by [U.S. District Court] Judge Richard Jones, who later ruled that the city was in violation of a previous order he had issued about the use of police munitions and tactics.

I really felt like there were journalists that were seriously injured, including myself, while covering the protest. And I thought our rights were constantly being challenged by officers on the scene. I’m really honored to stand up for journalists. I really think that’s the thing I want to be remembered for.