Outcast

Outcast magazine was a controversial British "queer" magazine. It was launched as a non-profitmaking project by Chris Morris in 1999. Contributors included Mayor Ken Livingstone, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy, Foreign Office minister Ben Bradshaw, Mark Simpson, John Hein, David Borrow and Peter Tatchell (amongst many others).

The magazine lampooned the "softly softly" approach of Stonewall Equality Limited and ran a series of exposés about the business dealings of London Mardi Gras (formerly Gay Pride).

Website shut down

An article on the OutRage! website claims that Kelvin Sollis of Chronos Publishing (Boyz) magazine, had their website shut down by their Internet provider NetBenefit.

The article reads:

The February edition of Outcast contained an editorial and a half-page article detailing irregularities in the registration at Companies House of Mardi Gras 2000 Ltd.: a commercial enterprise owned in part by gay press barons Kelvin Sollis, David Bridle, and Tony Claffey (QX Magazine).

Following the appearance of this article, solicitors Mischon de Reya acting for Chronos Publishing Limited, publishers of the Pink Paper and Boyz, wrote to Outcast’s Internet Service Provider, NetBenefit PLC, fearing that Outcast might publish something defamatory in a future article that might be published on their website.

On the 29th March at 4pm, Outcast received a letter from NetBenefit, warning that: “we advise you that we will suspend your website with effect from 6pm today unless we receive from your solicitors written assurance that the entire content of your website does not contain any defamatory material”. After such impossibly short notice, NetBenefit then shut Outcast’s website down at 7pm.

References

http://outrage.org.uk/tag/media/
http://forums.questioningaids.com/showpost.php?p=16021&postcount=2 by Chris Morris
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/is-the-future-black-for-the-pink-press-1304010.html