Local
Comings & Goings: Andrew Magie and Curtis Tate
Curtis Tate leaving D.C. for Record newspaper in N.J.
The ‘Comings & Goings’ column chronicles important life changes of Blade readers.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Curtis Tate
Congratulations to Curtis Tate who on July 24 will join the North Jersey Media Group to report on New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for The Record newspaper. North Jersey Media Group, part of the USA Today Network, is the leading provider of news and marketing services in northern New Jersey. The Record is an award-winning daily newspaper reaching nearly half a million readers a day with local, investigative and enterprise reporting. Forty-nine community newspapers circulate to 778,000 households across Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Morris, Hudson and Sussex counties.
Upon announcing his new position Tate said, “That’s right, a job that involves writing about bridges, tunnels and trains. Of course, this means packing up and leaving Washington after nine years and doing a U-turn back to the state where I lived before Obama, Trump and Christie.”
During his time in D.C., Tate worked for the McClatchy Washington Bureau as a policy reporter covering transportation and transportation safety, including the highway trust fund, crude by rail, positive train control, airport terminal and tower upgrades, and the expansion of major ports. He also did a stint as a regional reporter covering Kentucky, Kansas and southern Illinois issues and as a night and weekend editor responsible for managing the bureau budget, updating the website and coordinating coverage of major breaking news. Prior to coming to D.C., Tate worked for the Wall Street Journal as a copy editor and creator of headlines and display type for front page; writer and editor of front-page news summaries and collaborated with editors and reporters on stories in all sections. Prior to that he was with the Indianapolis Star.
Tate served two terms as president of the D.C. chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association. In 2015, he won a Freddie Award from the National Press Foundation and in 2014 was a finalist for a California Journalism Award. He has a bachelor’s in journalism with minors in political science and geography from the University of Kentucky.
Congratulations also to Andrew Magie, who landed a summer internship with The LGBT Health Policy & Practice Program at the George Washington University. This nationally respected certificate program was founded by Stephen L. Forssell, Ph.D. Dr. Forssell has said “The LGBT Health, Policy & Practice Graduate Certificate Program was developed with the assistance and consultation of health care and policy professionals in the government and private industry. The first of its kind in applied LGBT health, our program trains current and future healthcare leaders on strategies for addressing LGBT health issues, reducing health disparities for LGBT people, and for moving the field forward toward a more inclusive, equitable state.”
Magie is a rising sophomore at the George Washington University majoring in political science and physics and aspires to work in the Nuclear Energy Institute lobbying for the safe and environmentally friendly generation of nuclear power. He grew up in Templeton, a small town in the central coast of California. He is a well-known oboist in San Luis Obispo County and continues to play in GW’s bands, orchestras, and chamber ensembles as a principle oboist and was elected vice president of the University Orchestra for the 2017-2018 school year. He is also an Eagle Scout.
Andrew Magie
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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