About us

Xtra Magazine is published by Pink Triangle Press, Canada’s leading LGBTQ2S+ media organization founded in 1971 to advance the struggle for sexual liberation. Pink Triangle Press began as a small Toronto-based collective that published The Body Politic, an influential journal of LGBTQ2S+ news, thought and ideas. In 1984, Xtra was founded to both continue the legacy of the original publication, and move in a more commercial direction. In the ’90s, Xtra expanded to Vancouver and Ottawa. And in 2015, it was moved entirely online. A defining feature of Pink Triangle Press since its inception is its focus on community-minded journalism. Today, the vehicle for that activity is Xtra.

About our asterisk

At the core of our logo, and our website, is a familiar shape: the asterisk. The word comes from the Greek “asteriskos,” meaning little star. The asterisk has been used to sanitize curse words, or soften the blow of homophobic and transphobic slurs. It can also denote a footnote, an afterthought: information deemed not important enough for prime real estate, and relegated to the bottom of the page. But the simple punctuation mark can also hold power. The asterisk can tell us there is more to say, more to learn, more to do. Across every story, you’ll see a big asterisk sitting right at the top. It’s our promise that Xtra will never let LGBTQ2S+ people be an afterthought. We’ll never push our communities to the bottom of the page.

And just like that little star, shining for millennia, we aren’t going anywhere.

What else are you looking for?

Here is where you can find…

  • Our masthead;
  • Our principles (also known as our mission statement): Xtra informs, engages and inspires;
  • Inside Xtra: periodically, we publish stories about our staff and the work we do;
  • Editorial standards: where we outline newsroom ethics and guidelines, our diversity report, fact checking standards, corrections and requests to unpublish stories, our ownership structure and funding model, our editorial independence, our diversity statement and our audience and community feedback;
  • Privacy policy: all the legal fine print about any personal data we collect and what we do with it;
  • Terms of use: even more legalese around our user agreement.

And here is our contact info: meet the team, how to contribute, how to advertise and sponsorship.