Journalist who
helped start Windy City Times is dead

Journalist Jeff McCourt, who helped found the gay Chicago newspaper Windy City Times, has died at 51.

According to columnist Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader, McCourt started in the gay media as a writer at Chicago's Gay Life newspaper in the '80s, then left in 1985 to start Windy City Times. Through numerous staff upheavals, McCourt kept the paper humming along, and it became one of the most respected local gay papers in the country.

The paper was struggling financially by 2000, when McCourt sold the paper's name to former editor Tracy Baim to keep it alive.

Gregory Munson, a caretaker of McCourt's, said McCourt waged a long battle with AIDS. "He had HIV for almost 30 years," Munson told the Reader. "So he had that very much in control. It seemed more to me like he just gave up." (The Advocate)