The LGBTQIA+ Media Watch is dead, long live Nonsense
Friends, our grant ran out - but that doesn't mean Nonsense is over
Over a year ago I got a phone call informing me that I’d been successful in my application for a Public Interest Journalism grant from the Walkley Foundation and Meta. This was very surprising to me because I’d applied a long time ago, and I’d basically written it off as not going to happen, and had moved on to other projects (crying and living in my mum’s guest bedroom after a breakup, mostly).
The purpose of this grant was to grow my Substack newsletter with a specific project called The LGBTQIA+ Media Watch Project, which would provide original reporting on queer representation in media and culture. The idea stemmed from the usually terrible ways that straight-led media reported on LGBTQIA+ issues. At the time that this idea originated, I was seeing media flounder while trying to report on an increase in transphobia in Australia, culiminating in the Nazi-ridden tour of anti trans campaigner Kellie Jay Keen. Considering we’re still riding the shockwaves of that particular event in Australia, it shows just how unprepared Australian media was to cover this kind of organised far-right hate movement.
I was frustrated about the limitations in coverage from even progressive outlets, who failed to provide a broader context to the tour, used regressive terms, and even platformed transphobes to talk about it. The conservative outlets immediately jumped on board, eager for a culture war. But mostly I saw how trans people, and the broader queer community, were shut out from that reporting, and not only rarely given a chance to comment on the stories, almost never allowed to lead the reporting. The idea of the LGBTQIA+ Media Watch Project would be to put queer people and their reporting first, and provide lived perspective and lived expertise to the reporting on queer issues. Considering there’s only a handful of trans journalists and writers in Australia anyway, one of the goals was to help grow trans and gender diverse writers’ portfolios, and provide experience and guidance if possible. This also broadened to how LGBTQIA+ issues were represented in broader culture, not just in the media.
My role was to act as a kind of editor in chief - decide on what stories to cover, commission articles from a stable of freelancers, regular contributors, and a couple of columnists, edit and write stories, and run our social media and marketing. Essentially my job was to run a mini publication. I was well aware of the limitations of this role - I’m a white cisgender man, who can’t and shouldn’t represent the entirety of the community - the best I can do is uplift other voices, which I hope I managed to do. I had a bunch of initiatives I put into place to try and combat this limitation - but it’s still just a bandaid, really.
Working on this project has been one of the greatest privileges and honours of my life, and I’m insanely proud of what we accomplished, and the many brilliant articles and videos and posts we published. It was also maybe the most stressful and unrelenting years of my entire life, for many reasons - the largest being that I also got a book deal in the same week (lol), and also that I was stupid and didn’t really pay myself enough so had to hustle several other jobs at the same time (more on that later).
I’ve had a few weeks of distance from the project now, and my overwhelming emotion about it has moved from burnout into excessive gratitude: I thank all the people who helped the project launch, I thank all the amazing writers who trusted me with their work, and most of all I thank all the subscribers and readers, who literally made this possible (genuinely I cannot stress how much the subscriber fees helped me survive).
What did we achieve?
By March 2025, we published over 60 feature articles rather than the originally intended 40. This was a targeted increase as the hunger for features over news pieces was clear, so I changed tact halfway through. It was also clear that many other queer publications in Australia with more resources already admirably had the news story beat down, and I was better placed to respond with analysis, opinion, and reporting through feature pieces.
We published 40 queer writers from Australia and overseas, with 12 of those authors writing multiple articles for us.
We did three callouts for submissions, including one specifically for trans femme writers called “Dolls to the Front”, all of which resulted in hundreds of pitches and submissions. There are so many queer writers in the world - we only got to publish a drop in the bucket
Instead of weekly news pieces, I put that budget into more feature articles, and also paid for a writer to do monthly social first “explainer” pieces, and for a video journalist to do two monthly Instagram videos. This resulted in 12 Instagram explainer posts and 16 video reels, each of which were some of our highest performing social posts
Instead of 40 social posts for Instagram as planned, we exceeded 100, both with original content from the newsletter, and Instagram specific work
Some of our top performing articles:
Comedians obsessed with 'wokeness' are the ones ruining comedy
Over the past 10 years, we’ve had to listen over and over to the argument that “wokeness” and “cancel culture” are ruining comedy, because “you can’t joke about anything anymore”. For me, it’s always been an easy argument to dismiss, due to having a brain that works and a heart that exists. I’m not here to defend wokeness from the claim it ruins comedy …
2.
Is JK Rowling's brain actually full of black mould? An investigation
One of the enduring mysteries of our times for the online community, is why a formerly beloved children’s author would throw her career and reputation down the drain purely so she can make the lives of LGBTQIA+ people marginally worse. Why a multi-millionaire who lives in a castle would spend her days tweeting transphobia and boosting Russian misinforma…
3.
Hormones are a human right, and here's why
We’re a quarter of the way into the century, one that has seen massive change in the way we talk about gender and sexuality. While trans people are more visible to the wider public than ever, the idea of what a trans person is has itself undergone a massive shift. When we once were expected to undergo hormone replacement therapy, a million surgeries and blend in as much as possible to gain societal approval, now the fight for
4.
What is the WPATH "leak" and why is conservative media trying to position it as a “groundbreaking medical scandal”?
Author’s note: Some of the links in this piece are from websites, petitions and articles with severely transphobic rhetoric. If you visit the links, please do so with care.
5.
The media exploited Beau Lamarre-Condon’s homosexuality when reporting on the murder of Luke Davies and Jesse Baird
An image ricochets across my eyes: Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon at the Mardi Gras parade, surrounded by the colours of our people and dressed head to toe in the navy shades of his. This week, police charged him with killing two gay men, Luke Davies and Jesse Baird, may they Rest in Pride. They allege he used his police-issued .40 Glock semi-automatic p…
A chorus of angels
Nonsense originated as a newsletter to house me and Bec Shaw’s very popular Bachelor recaps. After I rage-quit from my job as editor of Junkee, they weren’t keen to keep our award-worthy recap series, so we took it private to the badlands of Substack. However, The Bachelor swiftly went into its flop era, and the newsletter gradually morphed into a broader queer culture and comedy offering, with me (your hero, Patrick Lenton) acting as the editor, and Bec as a kind of beloved yet distant queen who occasionally graces us with her benevolence (articles that make me cry because they’re so consistently funny and brilliant).
For the LGBTQIA+ Media Watch Project (wish I’d thought of a cooler and less long name - like ASSTOWN, or Big Barry’s Craw Shack), I only hired queer people for short and long term contracts. Behind the scenes, I’m very thankful to Alex Norman who did our branding and art work (still obsessed with our logo and these gorgeous colours), Srishti Chatterjee who worked on some launch strategy, and Samantha Wheeler who worked across the entire project on our paid advertising and analytics. Also a massive thanks to Patrick O’Duffy who was instrumental in helping me get the grant in the first place.
“We are feeling so done with being used” – talking to the British transgender kids who stormed the NHS England headquarters
2024 was tipped to be a particularly tumultuous year in politics, and so far it has surpassed even the most cynical predictions. When a former President in America is surviving an assassination attempt, it’s easy to forget that the field in Western Europe was experiencing a major shake-up. The Netherlands was
I’m also incredibly lucky to work with some absolute talents as our columnists and regular contributors. This included Julia Kanapathippillai who wrote regular social-first articles,
who did our brilliant video series, who wrote our Queer&A posts, and who was our only monthly feature columnist.It’s not a small thing to put in this kind of high quality work and dedication into an independent project like this - it’s something I really am thankful for. Utter brilliance from all of them.
Transparency!
It would be pretty funny to do a whole project about media transparency without being… transparent lol.
Payment:
Feature articles, videos and explainers: we begun our payment at $400 per 1000-1200 word article, with increases for fast turnaround or significant time spent researching. The most we paid for a single article was $800 for an investigation. This is more than most publications pay in Australia, but if I did it again, I would change from a flat rate to payment by the word (I’m just so bad at maths I couldn’t work out how to do that on the fly).
News pieces (400 words max): were $200
How did we use the grant:
Grant Funding Received $119,700.00
Project Salaries - 1x Part-time editor 12 months - Patrick Lenton $45,000.00
Columnist budget - $20,800.00
Contributor Budget - Multiple Freelance Contributors, 12 Months $34,331.90
Marketing - Facebook advertising for Instagram - $7,536.48
Marketing - Facebook advertising Marketing Consultant - $3,300.00
Project Admin Costs - $6,500.00
Graphic Design - $1,400.00
Acquittal Fee - $1,980.00
Total Expenditure $120,848.38
Let’s talk about the meta of it all
Meta is a piece of shit, and I’ve hated that godforsaken company for a long time. So why take money from them? God forbid a queer man has a hobby.
Because, frankly, it felt good to take their money and not only redistribute it into the queer community, but also report on how shit they are. If they had even a single ounce of editorial oversight over the project, I wouldn’t have accepted the money. But they didn’t! In fact, by the time I got this money, they’d completely stopped pretending to give a shit about ethical journalism, and scrapped the whole grant project. It’s also worth noting (to my handful of Bluesky critics) that **pretty much every Australian media company, including progressive ones, has received this grant before lol**. I’d ask the people who keep criticising this publication over the grant to specify what the issue is, when they have no impact on what our coverage is?
Meta is such a piece of shit that I discovered the promotion of the LGBTQIA+ Media Watch Project on their platforms was suppressed, despite the fact I was using their own money to do it. What this essentially meant was that it was almost impossible to do things like used paid Meta advertising to promote any overtly LGBTQIA+ content because they cracked down on any “political” content, and queerness is inherently political to them. They lowkey suppressed LGBTQIA+ content on Instagram and Facebook in more insidious ways too, which made it very funny to FORCE them to boost it via money when we could get around it (there are ways). And then to top it off, they recently allowed hate speech about LGBTQIA+ people to flourish on their platforms with no consequence.
Thanks for the money, eat shit.
So what’s NEXT?
I’m taking a BREAK. So are my columnists, who worked non-stop!
And by a break, I mean I am desperately trying to write my second novel, because baby it is due and I am very late. I also need a job now (hello!). I also need to promote my book In Spite of You, which is coming out in August. But even with the break, I’m still publishing to Nonsense - just not as often as I did when I had the Media Watch project going, because I’m not being paid to do that anymore and I need money. Bear with me as we settle into a new schedule.
Nonsense will still be the home of new writing from me and Rebecca Shaw, and once the dust has settled a bit, I will work out a nice and regular schedule of stuff. This will include my columns, Stupid! and One Thing, as well as other stuff that I haven’t decided yet.
As for the Media Watch Project, I don’t plan on finding another grant - grants are so scary, and I can barely add basic numbers together - but I will try to continue it in some way. The more people who remain subscribers, the more likely it is I can pay other contributors for a it. I am definitely open to continuing this project in some way, but right now, I don’t know in what form, or how! Let me know if you have some ideas (I’m talking to you, wealthy gay benefactor).
Having this audience at Nonsense is honestly just so wonderful - there’s now over 4000 free subscribers, which is insanely cool. I love this newsletter, and it’s still one of my top priorities, don’t even worry. One of the interesting things we discovered during this process is that even with all the amazing writers we found around the world, articles from Bec, Natalie and I were by far the most popular, showing that subscribers, I think, are interested in investing in a couple of regular voices. So, that’s what we will do!
I’d also love to hear from you, our subscribers, about what you want in the future. Let me know any concerns, let me know if there are any ways I can make you happy, I’m a people pleaser. And thank you again for coming along for this weird ride, it’s been a blast.
Somehow I misssd that the money behind this came from Meta, which makes me all the happier, because Nonsense is so great and they are so shit!
I am very happy to pay for this content. I would be happier still if you would consider moving away from Substack’s Nazi Bar, although I acknowledge that’s harder to do than many purists would post.
I love your silly little posts, and adore anything Bec writes. With the world on fire, we need queer joy too as well as deep dives into queer issues, so can we please have more Basil, more soft launching of boyfriends (or the equivalent because I guess it’s too much to expect you to get more boyfriends just as a content mechanism gosh). I know recaps can take forever to write but honestly I’d be keen to read summaries of conversations about it whatever the next White Lotus is.
Anyway, thanks for your very important mahi and your transparency and keep it up!
Sad to see the end of this great newsletter. Well done to you and all the writers who have provided so many interesting and informative articles. Hope you have a good rest Patrick. Looking forward to reading your new book and any Nonsense that inspires you.