Less than two weeks after celebrating its 27th anniversary, Update announced it will no longer be published by Dawn Media, Inc.

Update publisher Tom Ellerbrock, who is also the owner and president of Dawn Media, said difficult financial conditions fueled by a lack of advertising revenue have forced the newspaper to close its doors.

“One can fight the inevitable for only so long. The fact is that newspapers large and small have been experiencing dwindling advertising revenues for some time,” Ellerbrock said. “Since the stock market crash of 2000, the situation has worsened dramatically. Many smaller publications, such as Update, have tightened the belt as far as it will go.”

Update, whose first edition was published on March 23, 1979, was one of the longest-running publications in the U.S. catering specifically to a GLBT audience. According to late founder Don Hauck, who committed suicide on June 15, 1992, after being in poor health for over a year, the first edition of Update was assembled on a kitchen table. The lead story, “Police harassment at the Barbary Coast,” involved alleged police harassment when two men were arrested and jailed on lewd conduct charges for dancing together at the club.

In 1989, to commemorate Update’s 10th anniversary, former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor declared March 29, 1989, “Update Day” in San Diego for the paper’s contribution to civil rights in the San Diego community.

“It is with sadness but a strong sense of accomplishment that we end our 27-year contribution to GLBT San Diego,” Ellerbrock said in a statement. “We were fortunate to cover a pivotal time in our struggle for civil rights, a heroic response to a devastating plague, a maturation of our community that seemed incredibly distant nearly three decades ago. Where once there were few voices for our community, there are now thousands in the Internet age. So we will step aside with a sincere thank you to all who helped make it possible.”

Ellerbrock said that Dawn Media will continue operations and is considering offers for various portions of the holdings. “I’ve had some nibbles, let’s say,” he said.

Dawn Media also publishes adult publications Swing, TS Swing, Friends & Lovers and Swingtime, according to superpages.com.

Dawn Media vice president Amber Thorne, who has been with the organization for more than 12 years, recalls the closing of bathhouses in the wake of the AIDS pandemic as a significant story Update covered in the early to mid ’90s.

“The same thing [closing of bathhouses] was going on here in San Diego, and Update led the charge to keep San Diego bathhouses open so that guys could have a safe, sane and consensual place to engage in consensual [sex] – what any adult over 18 can do,” Thorne said. “… HIV rate[s] in San Diego steadied and went down, and the HIV rate in San Francisco went straight up. That was one of the more important things that Update specifically was involved in, leading the charge. Medicinal marijuana was another.”

Thorne said she will remember all the influential people she has interacted with over the years.

“We’ve certainly been on the cutting edge of activism. That for me has been extraordinary,” she said.

Gay & Lesbian Times publisher Michael Portantino said Update was an institution in San Diego.

“Don Hauck, its founder and publisher, was a pioneer here and through all of Southern California’s gay movement. Without Don and Update’s early support and vision, we as a community would have gotten a much later start on our road to equality,” Portantino said. “Throughout the years, Don and the recent publisher, Tom Ellerbrock, used Update as a vital lifeline for many disconnected members of our community.”

Portantino said Window Media, owners of Genre and six other gay publications, just went through a senior management change along with divesting itself of its majority stake in the New York Blade.

“The industry is changing,” Portantino added. “It’s no different than the consolidation we saw in many of the major markets for the straight dailies in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Here in San Diego, we had the morning Union and the afternoon Tribune, but due to the economy and changing consumer needs, they merged into one morning paper, the Union-Tribune.

“As the gay press continues to mature, we will see more major market consolidation,” he continued. “This is just the beginning of what will be a huge change in our industry. News print prices continue to rise annually, and then throw in the Internet and the remaining papers will need to continue to reinvent themselves.”

Todd Evans, CEO of Rivendell Media, a company that has specialized in gay and lesbian media planning and advertising since 1979, said it has been a tough year for GLBT publications in general. Evans recalled just recently that Weekly News, Southern Florida’s gay community newspaper, ceased publication last month after 28 years, and Northwest-based Magazine 99 also folded.

“It’s a tough business environment,” he said. “You have to have strong local ad sales because that’s the bottom line. No matter how well we do with national, national advertisers only want to be in publications that have a lot of local advertisers. That’s the only way that they know that they’re being read.”

Despite this environment, Evans said gay media advertising spending increased last year. According to the Gay Press Report 2005, which was produced by Rivendell Media and Prime Access and will be published later this month, spending in gay publications rose 2 percent in 2005 to $212 million, and during 2003 to 2004, it increased 28 percent. Evans said he expects 2006 to be a decent year as well.

“My feeling always has been, from a national perspective, that the market has been still – even though it’s a rosy picture – largely untapped by the majority of companies, and they should be in every [GLBT publication], in my opinion,” Evans said. “The cost is really relatively inexpensive to do that. I still think the big-picture gay market has a lot of growth ahead of it; that there’s a lot of really solid information coming out now that is going to fuel that growth.”