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Deb Price

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the American journalist. For the American politician, seeDeborah Pryce.

Deb Price
Deb Price in 2001
Born(1958-02-27)February 27, 1958
Lubbock, Texas,U.S.
DiedNovember 20, 2020(2020-11-20)(aged 62)
Hong Kong
EducationStanford University(BA,MA)
Known forLGBTQ+focused journalism
AwardsLambda Literary Award(2001);National Lesbian and Gay Journalists AssociationHall of Fame (2009)

Deborah Jane Price(February 27, 1958 – November 20, 2020) was an American journalist, author, and pioneering lesbian columnist.[1]A pioneer in representingLGBTQ+issues in mainstream media, she was the first nationally syndicated columnist on the topic.[2]She won aLambda Literary Awardfor her bookCourting Justiceand was inducted into theNational Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's Hall of Fame in 2009.[1]

Early life

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Price was born inLubbock, Texas,on February 27, 1958, to Mary Jane (née Caldwell) and Allen Palmer Price. Her father was anEpiscopal priest,and her mother was a receptionist with a law firm.[3]Her early years were spent in Texas and Colorado until her parents divorced when she was 15. She and her mother moved toBethesda, Maryland,where she graduated from theNational Cathedral School.She started her college atUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor,before transferring toStanford University,earning bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature in 1981.[3]

Career

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Price started her career with theNorthern Virginia Sunand the news agencyStates News Service,which provided syndicated news coverage of Washington for papers across the country. She went on to joinThe Washington Postin 1984 as an editor with the national desk, where she would meet her future partner Joyce Murdoch.[3]She later joined the Washington bureau ofThe Detroit News.[3]

Her debut column inThe Detroit Newsin 1992 was the first syndicated national column in mainstream media that spoke about gay life.[1][4]The column was syndicated by agencies including The Los Angeles Times Syndicate andGannett.Through her columns, Price sought to demystify perceptions about gay life, trying to portray same-sex couples in everyday scenarios. In her career over 18 years, she would write over 900 columns and help shape cultural attitudes and perceptions. In addition to covering everyday topics, she also took on pointed issues including gay members in the military.[3]Writing about her contributions,The New York Timessaid that her efforts were key in reversal of cultural attitudes about gay life and culminated in 2015 with the legalization of same-sex marriage.[3]

Her first book,And Say Hi to Joyce: America's First Gay Column Comes Out(1995), co-written with her partner Joyce Murdoch, was a compilation of her columns. Her second book,Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court(2001), which she also co-wrote with Murdoch, won theLambda Literary Awardfor 2001 and was considered a "crackerjack resource volume on gay legal history".[4]The book dealt with the history of theSupreme Court of the United States's handling of gay rights cases over a 50-year period.[5]

She went toHarvard Universityas aNieman journalism fellowin 2011, after which she and Murdoch moved toHong Kong,where Murdoch took an academic job.[4]Price shifted focus to business media and went on to work forThe Asian Wall Street Journal.She also served as managing editor for Beijing-based financial media houseCaixin Globaland was also the business editor for Hong Kong-basedThe South China Morning Post.[3]

She was the recipient of theGLAAD Media Awardfor her coverage of LGBTQ+ issues in mainstream media. She was also inducted into theNational Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association's Hall of Fame in 2009.[1]

Personal life

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Price met her partner Joyce Murdoch, then a fellow editor at the national desk ofThe Washington Post,in 1984. While they became a couple in 1985, they were able to register as domestic partners only in 1993, inTakoma Park, Maryland.In 2000 they entered a civil union inVermontand in 2003 married inToronto.Theirs was the first same-sex wedding announcement on thePost's weddings page.[3]Until then, the paper had published its same-sex union messages in a page titled "Celebrations" instead of the weddings page. This publishing was one of the first same-sex wedding announcements in a major national newspaper.[4]

Price died on November 20, 2020, frominterstitial pneumonitisin a hospital inHong Kongat the age of 62.[1]She had had a rareautoimmune lung diseasethat she contracted in 2011.[3]

Selected works

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  • Price, Deb; Murdoch, Joyce (1995).And Say Hi to Joyce: America's First Gay Column Comes Out.New York:Doubleday.ISBN9780385473651.OCLC31646321.
  • Murdoch, Joyce; Price, Deb (2001).Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court.New York:Basic Books.ISBN9780786730940.OCLC655054832.

References

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  1. ^abcdeRing, Trudy (November 28, 2020)."Deb Price, Pioneering Columnist on LGBTQ+ Issues, Dead at 62".The Advocate.RetrievedNovember 30,2020.
  2. ^Staver, Sari (November 27, 2020)."Award-winning journalist Deb Price dies".Bay Area Reporter.RetrievedNovember 30,2020.
  3. ^abcdefghiSeelye, Katharine Q. (December 10, 2020)."Deb Price, a First as a Columnist on Gay Life, Dies at 62".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.RetrievedDecember 11,2020.
  4. ^abcdSmith, Harrison (December 2, 2020)."Deb Price, first nationally syndicated columnist on gay life, dies at 62".The Washington Post.ISSN0190-8286.RetrievedDecember 11,2020.
  5. ^Hermann, Donald H. J. (2002)."Review ofCourting Justice".DePaul Law Review.51(4): 1215–1224.
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