Long before social media offered an instant connection, print media served as a vital lifeline for marginalized groups. Out & About was no exception. The magazine officially folded in September 2021, but during its tenure it did more than relay information — it galvanized a community by carving out a visible, physical space in a world that would prefer it remain hidden. Industrious by nature and creative by design, the magazine became an anchor for queer people throughout the Southeast.
“I started the magazine because there wasn’t a true source of journalism covering the community,” Jerry Jones, who founded the publication in 2002, tells the Scene. Already seasoned from working in Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s news office, Jones envisioned the magazine as “the hub” of the local community. Enlisting local volunteers — many from the Nashville Pride organization — the magazine gained momentum.
Out & About’sfirst long-term managing editor, Brent E. Meredith, helped bring the publication to life after Jones noticed the work he’d done redesigning Nashville Pride’s Pride Guide.
“It had a startup feel,” Meredith says from the same home office where he worked on the magazine. “Everybody was excited and new, and this was pre-marriage-equality, so everyone was fighting harder for the underdog.”
We’ve culled and considered, sorted and guffawed, rolled our eyes and nearly choked on our cherry Cokes.
Meredith worked tirelessly on the publication, and describes how he used to spread out magazine pages across the floor of his Sterling Court apartment. Meredith, who always seems to be thinking two moves ahead, quickly pivots to another memory: Out & About making the cover of the Scene’s 2007 “You Are So Nashville” issue — when a reader submitted the winning line, “You are so Nashville if you saw Kenny Chesney in a Kroger reading Out & About.”
Pam Wheeler, Pride’s president at the time, initially oversaw circulation — a crucial role at the beginning. Some subscribers needed anonymity, so Wheeler mailed issues in discreet-looking blank envelopes. Despite the responsibility, she remembers the era fondly. “The launch was a sweet spot in the history of our community,” she says. “It was a good time to be gay.”
The magazine’s launch also coincided with the opening of Tribe, which Jones describes as a “flash point” in wanting to start the magazine, because “it was the first gay bar in Nashville that had windows that weren’t blacked out” — signaling to him that visibility was increasing. This energy carried into 2005, when Meredith and Wheeler created and hosted Out & About Today, a monthly NewsChannel 5 program spotlighting Tennessee’s LGBTQ community, which Meredith still hosts.
With contributors almost entirely volunteer-based (the managing editor was the only paid staffer), Out & About achieved success. It survived several rebrands (including a name change to Out & About Newspaper following a brief Knoxville expansion, though it eventually returned to its original name) and frequent sabotage — Jones recalls people dumping distribution boxes or filling them with dog waste.
There was also a legendary clash with Kroger. The grocery chain initially refused to carry the magazine after signing a distribution deal; the magazine partnered with the Tennessee Equality Project to rally locals to shop elsewhere, forcing Kroger to honor the contract. Out & About also broke revelatory stories, including a series on illegally towed cars on Church Street and fraud by a local LGBTQ nonprofit.
The magazine’s final managing editor, James Grady, who held the role for nearly eight years, joined the magazine to connect more deeply with the local LGBTQ community. He guided it through its biggest transition — from newsprint to glossy. During his tenure, he wrote some of the magazine’s most-read and most provocative stories — including a piece on a local gay sex club and an in-depth look at racism within the gay community, which highlighted the experiences of Black gay men in Nashville.
When asked what he’d be covering if the magazine were still in print, Grady doesn’t hesitate: “Too many A-list gays will give up the trans community in a heartbeat if that means they get to hold on to their privilege. And if I still had a magazine, that’s what I would be calling out.”
Looking back on the beloved safe spaces of this iconic Nashville ‘gayborhood’ in light of its recent demolition
Though Jones later moved to Mexico and started Out & About Puerto Vallarta, he sold Nashville’s Out & About at the start of the pandemic, and has since called that one of his “biggest regrets.”
At the end of our conversation, I tell Jones how much the magazine meant to me and how, as a gay teenager in Nashville, reading it made me feel safe. Just seeing the magazine around town used to bring me comfort, and I love that you can still find some old Out & About distribution boxes standing around the city like sentinels. I reiterate how much I miss it.
“Me too,” he says of the loss. “But mission accomplished.”
