Today it was announced that DC Agenda (the d.b.a of Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc.) has purchased the “late” Washington Blade’s assets. The country’s oldest LGBT newspaper has a 40-year print and electronic archive that is absolutely an essential resource needs to be preserved and made available to the community.

“We are relieved that the Blade’s long history of quality, award-winning journalism will be preserved and accessible to the public,” said Lynne Brown of Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia and publisher of DCAgenda.

Brown, along with former Blade publisher, Kevin Naff, and former Blade, senior sales executive, Brian Pitts, founded Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia to chronicle local, national, and international news of interest to the LGBT community when the Blade ceased publication on November 16, 2009. DCAgenda has published weekly since November 20, 2009.

Along with the archive, DC Agenda will have exclusive use of the name The Washington Blade including copyright and trademark rights.

This is significant because in this wave of economic collapse of the news media, and bankruptcies everywhere, the fate of both print and digital archives is no small matter. The legacy of journalism, in particular specialized outlets like the Blade, are often left in limbo, robbing future journalists, historians and students of the craft without access to rich reporting. The Blade’s archives will hopefully find a home with a university library, and that the print editions will find a benefactor interested in digitizing them in searchable form.