Lisa Keen

Lisa Keen has been reporting news for LGBT audiences for over 35 years and is frequently considered the dean of gay political reporting in America. She served as the top editor of one of the nation’s most respected gay publications, The Washington Blade, for 18 years. She was one of the first two reporters for a gay newspaper to be credentialed to cover the White House and Congress, she’s covered U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1985 and she’s one of the only reporters to carefully analyze gay voting trends in presidential elections. She won the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for her coverage of an anti-gay initiative in Colorado and the subsequent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Romer v. Evans, as well as a Society of Professional Journalists award for her series of interviews — from diagnosis to death — with one of the first gay men to develop AIDS in the early 1980s. She has published commentary in The Washington Post, written environmental news for The Nature Conservancy magazine, and reported local news for The Boston Globe. Keen is also coauthor of Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial, published in 2000. Following the sale of the Blade in 2001 she began freelance work for LGBT news organizations around the country, specializing in national legal and political news, through Keen News Service. Keen always will be admired as a journalist’s journalist – tirelessly committed to reporting the rapidly changing stories that matter most to LGBT citizens.