Of all the myriad of sites in the blogosphere there are a few that stand out as true bastions of information for gay people. New Yorker Andy Towle's Towleroad.com is one that does. In between covering stories about whether Superman is gay, various gay bashings, and the latest in hi–tech gadgetry, Andy recently took the time to talk with AfterElton about his life as a blogger.

As with most other blogs, Andy's was at first set up as a personal site. A way for him to share his photography and writing with family and friends. It also filled in the space between jobs. Andy had been the editor of Genre magazine for close to two years, until Window Media bought it and he and the creative team were, as he says, "Thrown from the horse...quite suddenly."

As word of mouth got out about the writing, the slick look, and the smart yet fun sensibility of Towleroad, the traffic began to grow, sometimes by leaps and bounds. "As it grew," Towle says, "I became less comfortable with the amount of personal information I was sharing, so it evolved into a more news-oriented blog."

Still, the human aspect shows through even the most serious news items. Towle is adept at transferring his emotive state--compassion, anger, bewilderment--into the words he writes. He admits to being "fairly happy with the balance that has been achieved."

His readers are certainly in agreement, so many of them that Towleroad averages two million page views per month. The scope of his readers includes not only an enormous cross-section of gay men, but also many heterosexual women.

"They are pretty much like me," he says, in describing his readership. "They are addicted to information and appreciate a mixture of seriousness and levity."

Every morning, many from that large cross-section of visitors click onto Towleroad.com first thing with a hot cup of coffee to check out the latest buzz in the gay worldwide community. And the mainstream media seems to be paying attention as well.

"Blogs can push a story into the mainstream," Towle says. "Journalists don't really have to go pounding the pavement for stories anymore. The smart ones know where to find the early breaking news on blogs which they can spin into a larger story."

Case in point is the Macy's window display debacle in Boston. During Gay Pride Month an anti-gay group complained to Macy's about their display which featured, among other things, a male mannequin with the rainbow flag tied around his waist. The offending mannequins were quickly taken down.

The story hit the internet, including Towleroad. Soon gay men across the country knew what Macy's had done. The outrage was so fierce that the corporation promptly, if not whole-heartedly, apologized. The turnabout on Macy's part can likely be attributed in part to the fact that gay bloggers would not let the story die.

Says Towle, "When an issue begins getting a lot of attention on blogs it creates a kind of snowball effect, and when the snowball gets large enough, the inertia pushes an issue into the mainstream."

Andy keeps his eyes on other media for anything that might be of interest to himself and the public for which he writes. This includes everything from Entertainment Weekly and The Economist to Wired and The Drudge Report, which he describes as "visually-engaging and brilliantly presented...despite its politics."

An enormous amount of material is viewed each day, and much of it is not worth covering. His method for deciding what gets in is simple. "When I linger on something or keep coming back to it, I know that there's something there."

He doesn't, however, read much gay print media. Why? "These days there's nothing in gay magazines that I couldn't find somewhere else, and that should be their greatest concern."

Interestingly, Towle sees a future where gays and lesbians have been so assimilated into the culture that there might not be a need for gay-specific media anywhere. This might have been a ridiculous notion just 20 years ago, but now it seems highly possible, if not probable.

"I think we'll continue to see a relaxation of the mainstream media in their approach to gay topics." He points to Details and GQ as examples of this. That is the problem, he claims, for "gay glossy publications that have positioned themselves as 'lifestyle' magazines."

Towle points out that Details is a big-budget publication that covers gay topics sometimes more thoughtfully than many gay magazines. It's something that magazines like Out and Genre will have to face eventually. They also have to deal with the issue of speed. By the time a print magazine can cover a story the blogs have already thoroughly covered the topic and moved on to whatever news is breaking at the moment.

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