Pride Magazine: Desperately Seeking Talent

It used to be the case that the dubious "honour" of publishing the official magazine for Pride London (AKA London Pride etc etc) was rotated around the various lesbian and gay publishers in the UK.
It used to be sold in shops and gay venues - and even though hardly anyone bought it, it was pretty much a cash cow because advertising space could be sold to well-meaning but naive straight companies and organisations who wanted to show how down with the gays they were.
This year's Pride - "The only official Pride London magazine" - is published by Talent Media.
Talent Media also published last year's Pride magazine.
Who?
Talent Media describe themselves as "one of the UKs largest diversity publishers" and "a market-leading online and print media company specialising in promoting diversity, careers, education and skills. Our focus and experience is reaching and engaging core audiences including BME, LGBT, Women and 14-25 year olds, making key education and career decisions. We bring you established, tried-and-trusted, specifically targeted titles backed by a dedicated marketing, editorial and design team."
They also publish The Official Guide to Black History Month, Mela UK, The Official Guide to International Women's Month, Positive Nation, Network News and Your Talent Magazine.
These are all free magazines - either in print or online - targeted at various community groups; or umbrella not-really community groups, such as "LGBTQ" or "BME" (Black and/or minority ethnic), mainly to sell adverts to companies, trade unions and councils and so on who want to conform with their equal opportunity policies ("Was advert placed in LGBT press?" Tick).
And though it may sound all good, community-minded and worthy, it's really not that far removed from running up some flyers for a local takeaway pizza place; potential customers targeted directly and crudely by service providers.
And, like a takeaway pizza menu, the number of people who actually pick these things up and read them is incredibly small.
As well as Pride magazine, Talent Media publish LGBT History Month Magazine, and Polari, an online gay magazine which seems to have petered out this year. There were four items posted in April, one in May, and there have been none so far this month.
What are they like? With a cruel irony, "talent" is not a word that jumps to one's mind when one looks at anything from Talent Media.
Their latest venture appears to be PinkWire, another online gay magazine. It bills itself as a "a melting pot of the most witty and acerbic alternative commentary", but is actually a couple of people who can't write very well commenting on things they haven't really thought about.
Danielle Carter is "Director, Equality and Diversity" at Pride London - the event.
Danielle Carter is one of the two directors of Talent Media.
Danielle Carter is editor of Polari, LGBT History Month Magazine, PinkWire and Pride - "The only official Pride London magazine".
Danielle Carter claims to have "written for every LGBT publication to pretty much have graced the face of the earth".
We must take her at her word on this, as Fagburn cannot recall seeing her name in any other LGBT media, and nothing else comes up with her by-line if you Google her name.
The new Pride magazine features interviews - actually Q and As - with all the usual suspects being asked all the obvious questions.
People that are always in gay magazines, most of whom no-one's actually interested in; Pixie Lott, Johnny Partridge, Danny Miller, Brooke Vincent, Nadia Almada, Steven K Amos, Mariead (Who? - "the new hot new singer from Northern Ireland, born partially deaf..."), and Louie Spence - all are credited to Danielle Carter.
If one was being kind, one would say she obviously had to do them all in a hurry.
There are also interviews with Dr Christian Jessen and Paul Burston that do not credit an author, and one with John Amaechi credited to "Daniel Chacharos" - which sounds suspiciously like Danielle Carter.
I suspect that they would have liked to have had an interview with Kristian Digby, he's just the sort of inoffensive, gay daytime TV presenter you always get in these things.
But Kristian died last year following a tragic wanking accident so there's a tribute to him - written by Danielle Carter.
The multi-talented - and clearly very, very busy - Danielle Carter has also written the cover story; 'Lady GaGa - The Gay Debate'.
No, of course it's not an interview with the gaga one.
It is though, quite possibly the worst feature Fagburn has read in the gay press this year - and that's saying something; "The music world was hit right in the face last year by a woman who looked a bit like Marilyn Monroe singing catchy pop tunes..."
Ladies and gentlemen I give you Pride - "The only official Pride London magazine".
It would be interesting to hear why Pride London thought Talent Media were the best company to be awarded the contract two years in a row.
It's free, but quite frankly I'm amazed they can give something this shoddy away.
Is this the best we can do?