The Washington Blade served as D.C.’s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until Monday morning. This Friday, the paper intends to return as the D.C. Agenda. Editor Kevin Naff confirmed the re-Christening this evening at an event at the Hard Rock Hotel supporting the paper’s rebirth.
Naff, who was accompanied by about 100 supporters at the Hard Rock Hotel event, says he believes that all of the Washington Blade’s former staffers are in on the new project. Their first task, he says, was to agree on a new name for the paper. D.C. Advocate Agenda, Naff says, was “a group decision of about 25 of us.” Earlier today, the paper sealed the deal bysecuring its new Twitter account, @DCAgenda.

Now, the staff just needs to decide which aspects of the Blade to carry on in its new Agenda. “This is still very new,” Naff says. “We’re still looking at everything. Our core strength has always been news coverage, and that’s going to remain our core strength. But we’re not going to ignore the other areas, as well.”

The new outfit will need to get its editorial priorities straight quickly. The first issue of the paper, due to hit newsstands this Friday, Nov. 20, has already sold “six pages of ads without even trying,” Naff reports. “We were initially thinking of releasing it just as a newsletter, a leaflet, just to say, ‘hey, we’re still around,'” Naff says. “Now, we have plenty of space to fill.”