Of course, the moment Out released its latest ranking of the most powerful gay men and women in America, the big hoopla was over the ranking of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper at #2, considering that he’s never actually come out. Me, I was more interested in seeing if anybody in our industry made the grade…but I’m not sure what to make of the results. Oh, we have a few authors, like financial advisors Andrew Tobias and Suze Orman, or journalist James B. Stewart, but we don’t get a high-ranking publishing executive until Jonathan Burnham of HarperCollins at #33, and then I think that’s it until literary agent David Kuhn closes out the list at #50. You can’t tell me that Ann Godoff‘s influence has dropped that much since they did the rankings in 2001 (although, in all fairness, that list was twice as long). Hell, Penguin created an entire imprint for her!
Would it be terribly opportunistic if GalleyCat was to compile its own all-star roster of great gays in publishing? Not that we’d out anybody if they didn’t want to be officially on the list, of course. Maybe it’s something for us to consider for June. What do you think?