Our activities have got the attention of some press organisations, as well as magazines and podcasts. So that it’s easy to find all these in one place, here’s a collection of what people have had to say!
News
Local Press
Local news organisations from Edinburgh have shown interest in our tours and operations.
Edinburgh Minute
The Edinburgh Minute is a daily Substack produced by Michael MacLeod. It includes short descriptions of important news articles as well as valuable community notes on a variety of events about town. At time of writing it has 22 thousand subscribers.
It gives concise briefings on the day, every day, and is a must read if you want to stay up to date on Edinburgh’s goings on.
Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live is part of the Reach, who manage a variety of regional and national newspapers and press organisations. Nicholas Malizia reached out to us after a post on Bluesky, and he also has a follow up article in process.
Nicholas interviewed me to ask about the decision to drop Harry Potter for LGBTQ tours for Pride Month. He was very easy to talk to so there are some good quotations in there.
Edinburgh Live then did a follow up as well.
This one involved Nicholas coming on my tour and getting a first hand look at it. It’s good that journalism still involves in person meetings and discussions.
Radio
Since a lot of radio stations are necessarily regional, we have not been able to compile exhaustively where the Edinburgh Street Historians has featured in news output.
At least one person has reported the Street Historians featured on Brett Harris’ show on Gaydio. I can report that Gaydio play some pretty great music.
National Press
By national, I mean both in terms of Scotland as a nation and the UK as a nation.
Pink News
Pink News is the UK’s largest or at the least one of the largest gay news websites. They got the story mostly from the initial Edinburgh Live article mentioned above, but added their own extra contextual information which adds a lot of value to the story. I later talked with Sophie Perry and she said I should do an opinion piece, which I did!
I enjoyed writing this piece for Pink News as they are to date the biggest publication I’ve written for. I appreciated the chance to give our side of the story and also explain a bit about the Harry Potter tourism industry in general. An industry I am fortunately no longer involved in.
International Attention
The Edinburgh Street Historians decision to drop Potter tours for LGBTQ+ tours got the interest of several international press and magazines.
Gayety
Gayety is a US based gay entertainment and news hub which was started in 2015 but has already become a fairly significant publisher of news and updates. They got some of their information from Pink News and Edinburgh Live but also added some quotations from various comment sections as well as analysis on the importance of the decision in a wider context.
Book Riot
Book Riot is the “largest independent editorial book site in North America” according to their website. In addition to writing about books and publishing, they also write about news headlines that relate to books. They have about 1.1 million visitors a month.
We were included in their “Today in Books” article for the 14th of May. The title for our section is particularly nice – “Walk the Walk”. They repeat similar quotations as other articles on the same topic but they also end with what I found inspiring, “Here’s hoping this will become a permanent change”…
Further News?
It remains to be seen when the Edinburgh Street Historians will garner more headlines, but we are actively seeking to talk more about how we certainly think our tours might help to reshape Edinburgh’s visitor landscape. We are trying to offer a range of different tours which vary considerably from what is on on offer already. In addition to this, we are trying to produce a range of articles which offer a different perspective on the question of what Scotland and Edinburgh are in the first place.
If you are a journalist or news organisation and are interested in reaching out, feel free to use our contact page.
The writer of this piece has many roles.