Practicum - Kim

I decided to try out a new type of site that is different than the forums and blogs I have been focusing my participation and research on. The site I came across is www.echelonmagazine.com, whose slogan is "taking pride in business." Echelon is a digital news magazine that is meant to serve LGBT business professionals. It creates a special interest group within a special interest group because not only is it geared towards the LGBT community, but more specifically to the business community.

Echelon's goals are the following: to empower the LGBT community by profiling successful professionals and providing informative articles regarding finance, health, and entertainment; to inspire budding and existing entrepreneurs and corporate employees; to dispel the various myths and stereotypes of the LGBT community; and to reach out primarily to corporate executives, managers, government officials, entrepreneurs, and college students. Upon reading about the magazine, I found out that Echelon's articles are distributed by a targeted network of LGBT organizations, community centers, events, and newsletters (which would make sense), and would explain why pretty much any advertisement displayed on the site are specific to LGBT.

Echelon is like any other news site, except that its content is all LGBT related. I then started thinking of this concept like a member of the group. On one hand, I understand the desire to have a site not cluttered by random posts from users who are mostly amateur, like on reddit or queerattitude. On the other hand, this site being designated for "professionals" and "entrepreneurs" seems to promote exclusivity and create a hierarchy within the the LGBT group that I didn't originally think would exist. I guess it showed me that in any community, online or not, minority or majority, there will always be some distinction in status.