The Outstanding Blog category has been eliminated from the newly announced GLAAD Media Awards, and along with it the grassroots first-person voices of writers across the entire LGBT spectrum, including those of us living with HIV.  

 
I was honored to be a 2015 nominee in the Outstanding Blog category, and although I couldn’t afford to attend (the event is a fundraiser, after all, as explained to nominees when GLAAD declined to provide comp tickets), I truly appreciated the fact GLAAD shined a spotlight on our work. Well, maybe we didn’t sell enough seats to the dinner, despite multiple emails from GLAAD last year urging me to buy a table.

Communications director Seth Adam tells me that “online journalism” and “blogging” have become indistinguishable in the media landscape. That’s ridiculous. Not only do we, as bloggers, provide a voice of lived experience not featured in mainstream outlets, we are without the resources to compete with the likes of The New York Times, MSNBC, and other online journalism nominees.  
 
Folding blogs into the online journalism category is a disingenuous ploy; not a single past nominee or winner for Outstanding Blog is present anywhere on the 2016 list of award nominees.

GLAAD hasn’t simply marginalized the unique voice of bloggers. They have rendered us dispensable and ultimately invisible. It’s shameful that a national organization that purports to lift up LGBT voices has dismissed the very people and outlets that deserve encouragement and recognition.

But hey, won’t the GLAAD award race between Carol and The Danish Girl be a tight one? Maybe Eddie Redmayne will show up to the awards. That would be just the sort of evening GLAAD is hoping for.