Queer journalist Enrique Anarte has a pretty sweet gig. He’s a correspondent for Context, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s online journalism platform, and the TikTok lead for Openly, its LGBTQ news site. In those roles, he effectively covers the world of LGBTQ news, reporting from his home base in Berlin, and traveling far afield, to places like Namibia and Kenya.

I sat down with him recently to talk about his career, the new tools of an old trade, and the stories that have meant the most to him.

Anarte is an experienced journalist, with a master’s in European Union studies and proficiency in five languages. Much of his work for Thomson Reuters is traditional reporting, abundantly sourced and rigorously documented. Less traditional is his presence on social media. Anarte has a large following on TikTok and Instagram, where he posts short, sometimes humorous videos on LGBTQ topics. It’s a new day, he says, and not everyone looks for news and information in traditional formats.

‘I Contain Multitudes’

“Social [media] cannot be an afterthought,” he told me. “If that happens, you are not serving people with the kind of formats or journalism that they need. We need to understand that social audiences are humans, right? As Walt Whitman said, ‘I contain multitudes.’ When someone opens the newspaper in the morning and then opens TiKTok before bed, they might be seeking the same kind of information, but in slightly different ways.”

Anarte pays close attention to the feedback he gets online, enabling him to craft content that aligns with the interests and needs of his audience. But he isn’t necessarily trying to go viral.

“I think virality is a double-edged sword,” he said. “[More important is] the reaction from the community online and the kind of engagement and relationship with the audience that I didn’t have as someone writing articles.”

@enriqueanartelazo 🙋🏻‍♂️ Reintroducing myself and my work here for my old and new followers 🌈 #journalist #journalism #lgbtnews #lgbtqrights #europeanunion ♬ original sound – Enrique Anarte – Journalist

Queer Journalism Comes of Age

Meeting Anarte, a queer reporter covering the LGBTQ community, reminded me of meeting Randy Shilts in 1983. Shilts was the first openly gay reporter in the United States hired by a major newspaper — the San Francisco Chronicle — to cover the gay community. We met in San Francisco during the annual convention of the Gay and Lesbian Press Association, a gathering of what was then a very exclusive club: openly queer reporters.

Shilts, a meticulous reporter and author who died in 1994, would no doubt be delighted by the increase in the ranks of LGBTQ journalists today — and perhaps envious of their easy access to a global audience.

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An edited version of this feature aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.