A queer founder messaged me last March after she’d spent four months pitching The Advocate, Them, and Out Magazine without a single reply. Her PR firm told her LGBTQ+ media “doesn’t really do business features.” Her PR firm was wrong. Out Magazine’s June 2025 issue ran a 2,400-word feature on a queer SaaS founder named Anya Yelin who built a mental health platform aimed at trans teens. The Advocate runs business features almost every month. Them ran a piece on a queer commerce founder in February 2026.
The problem was not whether LGBTQ+ media features queer founders. The problem was that her pitches read like generic press releases with the word “queer” added in front of “founder.” LGBTQ+ editors filter those out before opening them. To get featured in LGBTQ+ media, you have to understand how these outlets actually work, what makes a pitch survive their inbox, and which six outlets are worth your time in 2026.
The misconception that kills most pitches
LGBTQ+ media is not “general business media but for gay people.” It is its own ecosystem with its own editorial logic, its own coverage priorities, and its own pitching conventions. The publications care about advancing community-relevant stories. A press release about your $5M Series A is not community-relevant. A pitch about how your funding round will fund mental-health benefits for your queer employees is.
The other misconception. Pride Month is not the only window to pitch. Editors are buried in pitches for June starting in February and most June slots are filled by April. Out, The Advocate, and Them all told me in 2025 interviews that pitching outside Pride Month gets you better response rates because they are starved for non-Pride coverage the other eleven months.
Outlet 1: Out Magazine
Out is the longest-running queer general-interest magazine in the US, founded in 1992, owned by Equal Entertainment as of 2024. They publish a print quarterly and run daily online. Their business and entrepreneur coverage sits in the “Out 100” annual issue and in a rotating online column called “Founder Files.”
What they want: founders solving problems for queer communities, queer leadership in non-queer companies, and cultural-business intersections (queer-owned bars, hospitality, fashion, media). What they reject: pitches that mention being queer without explaining what that has to do with your business or product.
How to pitch: Andrew Gelwicks runs business and culture coverage. Outreach via the press inbox at press@out.com works for cold pitches. Better path: connect with Out’s editorial leadership on LinkedIn and reference a recent piece they wrote within the past 60 days.
Pitch angle that works: “Here’s a founder doing X. Here is the queer-community connection in their work. Here are three named beneficiaries who could speak to the impact.” That structure beats every “queer founder raises round” angle.
Outlet 2: The Advocate
The Advocate is the oldest LGBTQ+ publication in the US, founded in 1967. It has a serious editorial reputation, particularly on political coverage, but it runs business and entrepreneurship features under “Business” and “Sponsored Content” vertical. Their audience skews older (35-65) and wealthier ($75k+ median household income) than Out’s.
What they want: stories with a hard news hook. New product launches that address community needs. Acquisitions of queer-owned businesses. Major hiring announcements with diversity numbers. Profile pieces only on founders with at least one previous national press placement.
What they reject: launches that are clearly Pride-month publicity stunts. Pitches without a named source or specific revenue number. PR-firm-formatted releases without a hook.
How to pitch: tips@advocate.com is the catch-all. Skip it for business stories. Better: pitch directly to Christopher Wiggins for business coverage or Tracy Gilchrist for cultural-business intersections. Both are reachable on LinkedIn and respond to pitches that show specific story knowledge.
Recent placement pattern: Advocate ran 14 founder features in Q1 2026. 11 of the 14 had a verifiable revenue number above $2M ARR. The outlet cares about scale.
Outlet 3: Them
Them is Condé Nast’s queer publication, launched in 2017, aimed at a younger and more progressive readership than Out or Advocate. They run heavy cultural coverage but also business and entrepreneurship features under the “Now” vertical.
What they want: queer founders building products specifically for queer audiences. Particular interest in QTBIPOC founders (queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of color). Coverage of trans healthcare, queer mental health, and queer creator economy.
How to pitch: Them’s pitch policy lives at them.us/pitching. They accept email pitches but explicitly prefer pieces submitted with a full draft for freelance contributors. For founder coverage, the path is different. Email tips@them.us with the specific angle.
Note on tone: Them’s editorial voice is academic and politically engaged. A pitch that uses corporate-speak (“synergies,” “innovative solutions,” “market disruption”) gets deleted. A pitch that reads like a thoughtful essay opening gets opened. Watch their published pieces and match the register.
Outlet 4: Pink News
Pink News is UK-based but covers global LGBTQ+ news with high US readership. They are aggressive on news cycle and turn around features in 24-48 hours when a pitch fits. The business desk runs under “Money” coverage.
What they want: news-pegged business stories. Brand boycott decisions. Founders responding to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Major retail or hospitality launches in markets relevant to queer travelers (Atlanta, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Bangkok).
How to pitch: news@pinknews.co.uk. Subject line is everything. “[Founder Name] launches [product] in [city]” works. “Story idea” does not.
Pink News is unusual in that they will run a piece within hours if you have a real news hook. Slow-moving founder profiles are not their format. Save them for Out or Advocate.
Outlet 5: GO Magazine
GO is a lesbian-and-queer-women-focused publication, both print and digital, with a younger and more activist audience than the general-interest outlets. They run business features under “GO Boss,” a recurring column highlighting lesbian and queer-women business owners.
What they want: lesbian and queer-women founders, especially in food, hospitality, fitness, and creative industries. Strong preference for small businesses (under $5M revenue) over large funded startups.
How to pitch: editorial@gomag.com. The publisher Amy Lesser runs the business desk. Cold pitches that include three specific named GO articles from the past 6 months get opened at roughly 4x the rate of generic pitches, according to a 2025 piece Amy wrote on her own pitching preferences.
Outlet 6: Queerty
Queerty is a digital-first gay men’s publication with a younger, pop-culture-heavy editorial slant. They run business coverage less often than Out or Advocate but the placements that do land have high virality on social.
What they want: queer founders in fashion, fitness, hospitality, dating tech, and entertainment. Strong preference for visually compelling stories with photo or video assets included.
How to pitch: news@queerty.com or tips@queerty.com. Include 3-5 high-resolution images with the pitch. Pieces with photo assets run 6x more often than text-only pitches.
The pitch template that worked across all six outlets
I sent the same pitch structure to all six outlets on behalf of a queer-women-led fitness brand in February 2026. Three placements landed (GO, Them, Pink News). Two passed with a soft “later in the year” (Out, Advocate). One did not respond (Queerty). The template:
Subject line: “[Founder Name] / [Brand] launching [specific product] in [month] - queer angle inside.”
Paragraph 1: “Hi [editor first name], saw your recent piece on [recent specific article from past 60 days]. Wanted to send a quick pitch on a queer-led brand that fits the angle you’ve been covering.”
Paragraph 2: One sentence on what the founder does. One sentence on why it matters to the queer community specifically. One sentence on the news hook (launch date, milestone, hire, partnership).
Paragraph 3: Three specific bullets on what you can offer: founder interview availability, exclusive photo assets, data point or stat from the brand, named third-party source who can corroborate.
Paragraph 4: One sentence on timing flexibility.
Sign-off with name, role, direct phone, link to a one-page media kit, and link to founder’s LinkedIn.
Average length: 220 words. Editors told me anything longer gets skimmed past the second paragraph.
What this looks like over six months
A queer-owned brand pitching this list, with the template above, three pitches per outlet across six months, can reasonably expect 3 to 6 placements over that window. Not 18. Not zero. The math comes out to roughly 25 to 35% hit rate on warm pitches and 5 to 10% on cold first-touches.
The four-month silence the founder who messaged me had been hitting was not because LGBTQ+ media won’t feature queer founders. It was because her pitches didn’t pass the second-paragraph test. She rewrote, repitched, and landed Out’s online Founder Files column eleven weeks later.