Divine Providence, by far my favorite local publication, is switching to an online-only format after next week. Founder Eric Marion cites ad sales as the cause of the switch.

For those of you unacquainted with the magazine, every Thursday it provided sixteen pages of news about the gays; the back cover of every issue was a handy map of downtown Providence and the front cover was always a really low-contrast photo of some shirtless dude, stretched out beyond recognition in some arbitrary direction.  In-between there were news, ads for all the gay bars, and Princess Pearl’s gossip/fashion column. One of my favorite things about DP is that the online version of the magazine was always presented as a PDF, but without a print edition I’m not sure whether or not that will continue.

I liked Divine Providence because you always knew what you were getting with it (kinda like the Federal Hill Gazette, another personal favorite)  It didn’t try to magically include anyone or pretend to be any deeper or bigger than it was, and Marion’s editorials were always delightfully snippy, even if I didn’t always (or often) agree with them.