My friend and colleague Michael Mason, who has died aged 67 of lung cancer, was a leading figure in the gay press for more than two decades, breaking many stories and highlighting injustices.
Michael’s campaigning journalism was designed to balance the untruths and prejudice prevalent in the mainstream media of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. He reported on legal and social discrimination, and on the developing liberation politics of the era.
From 1972 onwards, Michael was intricately involved with Gay News, where he was an opera critic and news reporter before becoming news editor and a director of the company. Gay News was founded by Andrew Lumsden and others in the Gay Liberation Front who were incensed that the mainstream media were largely ignoring the fledgling gay liberation movement. The title was simple: it was somewhere to read gay news.
It was through answering the phone to readers that Michael realised there was a need for a helpline, and so he helped to launch the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard in 1974. He was also involved in the creation of the campaigning Gay Sweatshop theatre company. In 1977 it was left to Michael to steer Gay News while its editor, Denis Lemon, was diverted by a prosecution for blasphemous libel brought by Mary Whitehouse.
I was lucky enough to work with Michael after I joined Gay News in 1980, and we found we had similar attitudes to journalism, politics and life. The following year we launched Capital Gay, a weekly publication in London with an emphasis on news. It was there that Michael ran a 1987 front page leader that first drew attention to the threat posed by Clause 27 of the Local Government bill, soon to become the infamous Section 28, which introduced a ban on the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools.
Michael’s editorial, headlined “The challenge of the century” called Clause 27 “the most serious legal attack on our rights since male homosexuality was outlawed more than 100 years ago” and helped spark a campaign that involved thousands of people over many years. During this controversy the paper’s offices were targeted in an arson attack.
Michael was born in London, the son of Kenneth, a journalist and book publisher, and Marjorie (nee Edwards). The family had moved to Hampshire before Michael attended Lancing College, West Sussex, from where he won a scholarship to read jurispridence at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
He found time to present Bookshelf for LBC Radio in the mid-70s, to lecture in journalism at the London College of Printing in the late 70s, and to help produce the University of Utrecht’s Pink Book, an annual review of lesbian and gay liberation, from 1986 to 1988.
Michael enjoyed his extensive library, troublesome young men, and the odd glass of chablis. He is survived by his father and his brother Piers.
