MORE THAN A NEWSLETTER.
A community’s history doesn’t preserve itself. Someone has to keep the record.
OUR STORY IS THE COMMUNITY’S STORY.
Long before social media feeds became the way people discovered events, organizations and one another, LGBTQ+ communities depended on people willing to create connections and keep information moving.
Keystone Alliance / Gaylife Newsletter — KAGN — grew from that tradition of community connection, visibility and documentation.
Across the years, the names, formats and ways we communicate have evolved. The purpose behind the work has remained remarkably consistent: help people find community, make LGBTQ+ lives visible, preserve the stories that might otherwise disappear, and create a record proving that we were here.
Today, KAGN carries that work forward online — bringing decades of community history into conversation with the people creating its next chapter.
DOCUMENTING YESTERDAY. SHOWING UP TODAY.
KAGN exists at the intersection of community, culture, visibility and history.
Connect People
We share community news, organizations, events and the people doing the work — helping LGBTQ+ people and allies discover what is happening around them.
Make Our Community Seen
Visibility matters. KAGN documents LGBTQ+ people as organizers, artists, performers, neighbors, families, advocates and members of the communities in which we live.
Preserve the Record
Old newsletters, advertisements, newspaper clippings, photographs, Pride programs and personal memories are more than memorabilia. Together, they form a community archive.
Celebrate LGBTQ+ Life
Pride, drag, arts, entertainment and community gatherings are part of our history too. Celebration and culture have always helped create the spaces where people find one another.
WE KEPT THE RECEIPTS.
LGBTQ+ history isn’t only found in national headlines or history books. It also lives in local bars, community newsletters, handwritten flyers, Pride photographs and newspaper clippings saved in somebody’s drawer.
Those records tell us where people gathered, what they endured, what they celebrated and how they responded when their community was challenged.
KAGN believes those stories deserve to survive.
The record is still speaking.
Our archives include contemporary records documenting LGBTQ+ community life in the Johnstown region — including advertisements, press coverage and community publications surrounding the attacks against local gay establishments in 1997 and the community response that followed.
PRIDE ISN’T ONLY HISTORY. IT’S STILL HAPPENING.
Johnstown Pride began in 1999 and continues to bring LGBTQ+ people, families, friends, performers, organizations and allies together. Today, Keystone Alliance / Gaylife Newsletter continues the tradition of presenting Johnstown Pride while documenting the people and moments that become tomorrow’s archive.
Every Pride adds another photograph, another memory and another chapter to the story.
“There are thousands of people responsible for the success of this newsletter; it’s not just me.”John DeBartola · Johnstown Magazine · January 2013
THE HISTORY ISN’T FINISHED. WE’RE STILL WRITING IT.
KAGN is bringing its history forward while building new ways to connect the community — through digital storytelling, community coverage, Pride, arts and entertainment, archival preservation and the return of the KAGN newsletter.
The technology changes. The community grows. New voices join the story. But the reason for keeping the record remains.