2026-06-27 –, Room 105 (Seats 84)
In the summer of 1981, one of the longest-running queer newspapers, San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, reported on a mysterious illness affecting the gay community. The small, independent press was the first media outlet to identify a new disease that the CDC would later call HIV/AIDS. Over the subsequent decade, queer papers stayed ahead of mainstream reporting on the epidemic, transforming into vital exchanges of medical news, advice, and support. Facing discriminatory negligence on the part of mainstream media and traditional public health institutions, queer journalists and their readers built an alternative communications infrastructure that transected national borders, turning a more sporadic collection of local papers into a global network committed to producing and disseminating life-saving knowledge.
Over the course of the epidemic, letters-to-the-editor sections at these newspapers were expanded by their editorial staff to enable widespread reader engagement on the matter of medical research and information sharing. While their journalists endeavored to provide the most current medical information as reports of fatal pneumonia and Kaposi’s Sarcoma among gay men increased, the papers’ reader letters served as a check on those reports, with readers providing their own doubts, concerns, and theories about ongoing reporting on the disease. Based on newspaper sources from queer publications printed in both the United States and abroad, this paper explores the ways that local newspaper readers created an international community around unofficial medical information sharing to navigate a global epidemic.
Alexandra Coakley is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on small local newspapers and international activism in the late 20th century. Her dissertation project examines the work of queer journalists during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the ACT UP protest movement. Alexandra holds a BA in history from Occidental College. Before arriving at Berkeley, she worked as an editor.