Tracy Baim
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Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor at Windy City Media Group, which produces Windy City Times, Nightspots, and other gay media. She co-founded Windy City Times in 1985 and Outlines newspaper in 1987. She has won numerous gay community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop’s Studs Terkel Award in 2005. She started in Chicago gay journalism in 1984 at GayLife newspaper, one month after graduating with a news-editorial degree from Drake University.r r In 2013, she produced a 2400-question LGBTQ trivia game: That’s So Gay! to help counter negative comments about the community. Baim was executive producer of the lesbian feature film Hannah Free (2008, Ripe Fruit Films), starring Sharon Gless. She also produced Scrooge & Marley, a gay Christmas film out December 2012. She was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1994 and was named a Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 leader in 1995. Baim is a native Chicagoan and has been with her partner, 20-year Air Force veteran Jean Albright, since 1994.r r In 2024, Baim became executive director of Press Forward Chicago, a collaborative fund dedicated to strengthening local news organizations as they work towards long-term sustainability. Housed at The Chicago Community Trust, Press Forward Chicago is a local chapter of the national Press Forward initiative, which the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation led to raise unprecedented resources to revitalize local news.
Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer | Gay Games VII: Where the World Meets | Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America | Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria | Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow | Mom: A Tribute to Mothers of LGBTs | Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage | Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City’s Gay Community | The Fight for Marriage Equality in the Land of Lincoln | The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter | Vernita Gray: From Woodstock to the White House