Gay publishing pioneer Henry McClurg has died

Henry McClurg of Houston, a pioneer in the LGBT news publishing industry, died Sept. 16 at the age of 70.
Originally from Mississippi, McClurg was working at a Houston radio station when he decided to start a gay magazine. Contact, the first of his many publications, launched in March 1974, according to HoustonLGBTHistory.org.
That first magazine featured a national bar guide but focused on gay news from the Gulf States, and McClurg published 17 issues, the last in October 1975. At that point, he sold Contact to The Advocate and, as part of the sale, agreed to work for The Advocate himself.
After about a year, though, McClurg left The Advocate to start the Montrose Star, which would become Houston’s first “gay newspaper” focusing on news, HoustonLGBTHistory.org notes. The Montrose Star lasted through the end of 1980 — briefly changing names to The Star from 1977-78 — before McClurg sold it to businessman Burt Hollister in 1980.
In October 1980, McClurg launched his next newspaper, Montrose Voice, which remained in publication until 1991, when it became The New Voice. Two years later, in 1993, The New Voice became The Houston Voice, and was sold to Dr. Crad Duren and his lover, Tad Nelson. When Nelson died in 1995, Duren sold the Houston Voice to Windows Media, which owned several LGBT newspapers including at the time the Washington Blade in Washington, D.C., and The Southern Voice in Atlanta. Houston Voice closed when Windows Media declared bankruptcy in 2009.
McClurg launched Montrose GEM (the GEM standing for Gay Entertainment Magazine) in 2005. He sold it to Michael Gaitz in 2010 and the magazine closed the next year when Gaitz died unexpectedly.
McClurg relaunched the Montrose Star in March 2010 but sold it just months later, in November that same year — to Laura Villagran. He also published the short-lived Montrose News in 2011.
While McClurg is known mainly for his many newspapers and magazines in the Houston area, he also played a role in the LGBT publishing scene in Dallas.
In 1982, McClurg and his then-business partner William Marberry launched The Dallas Gay News. They hired Don Ritz as editor and, shortly after, Robert Moore as an ad salesman.
(See a complete list of McClurg’s publications through the years here.)
Moore said this week that he and Ritz had worked for McClurg, who at the time was vice president of the National Gay Media Association, for about 18 months when they decided they had a different vision of what an LGBT newspaper should be. So when Marberry — who had earlier parted ways with McClurg — approached them about starting a newspaper they agreed, and in May 1984 the three published the first issue of Dallas Voice.
Moore and Ritz later bought Marberry’s share of the newspaper and were co-owners until Ritz’s death in 2001. Moore was sole owner of the paper until April 1, 2013, when he sold it and the other Voice Publishing Company properties to long-time Dallas Voice employees Leo Cusimano and Terry Thompson.
“Henry was always a survivor,” Moore said this week following McClurg’s death. “He was always looking for his next opportunity, his next newspaper.”
Again according to the Houston LGBT History site, McClurg also ran the Montrose Guest House for about 15 years, beginning in 1993.

— Tammye Nash