Dallas Voice founder and original publisher Robert Moore, right on a panel at the Hall of State on March 16, with Dallas Weekly publisher Patrick Washington. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)

Dallas Voice founder Robert Moore sat on a panel at a Dallas Historical Society presentation about the city’s “alternative” press.

“Alternative to what?” wondered Melita Garza, who is a faculty member in the journalism department of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication. Is it right to call Univision alternative, when its evening news broadcast is the highest rated network news program in the U.S?

“We’re not alternative people,” she said, just people with “different voices and ideas.”

Also on the panel were Patrick Washington, publisher of Dallas Weekly and Norma Adams Wade, the first Black full-time reporter for the Dallas Morning News.

Moore told the story of how he founded Dallas Voice and some of the early challenges the paper faced.

Asked where the name Dallas Voice came from, he explained he previously worked at Dallas Gay News, but stores and restaurants refused to put out a publication with the word gay on its cover, so an early partner in the business named it Dallas Voice.

Talking about advertising, he said the first professional ad Dallas Voice ran was from a dentist with a Highland Park practice. His friends warned him that advertising in the LGBTQ paper would ruin his business. Instead, he stuck with his decision and ran an ad for the next 10 years.

Talking about how things have changed, Moore told the story of the first time a political candidate placed an ad with him. He was working at Dallas Gay News at the time. When he went to an office to pick up the check and told the receptionist who he was with, he was told to have a seat. Over the next 20 minutes he was waiting, he felt like he was on display as everyone in the office came to check out the gay in the waiting room.

Moore compared that to what was going on at the time he retired from Dallas Voice. “We were waiting for a ruling on same-sex marriage,” he said.

— David Taffet