Forty Years of Qnotes: A Community Writing Its Own History

Published on August 14, 2026

A 2001 edition of Qnotes when it was celebrating its 15th anniversary.

Some newspapers report about a community, and others become part of the community itself. For the last four decades, QnotesCarolinas (Qnotes) has done both.

What began as a small grassroots newsletter has survived political battles, the transformation of the news business from print to digital and the steady disappearance of local and community newspapers across the country. Along the way, Qnotes, one of the longest-running LGBTQ news publications, has been steadfast in documenting the hard-hitting, celebratory and sometimes obscure stories happening in the Carolinas and nationally.

However, a newspaper's history is not just about its reporting, but it’s also about the people. For former editor and photographer Matt Comer, Qnotes was the newspaper he grew up reading, then had the honor of working for. For publisher Jim Yarbrough, it became his life's work.

Together, their stories help explain not only how Qnotes survived for 40 years, but also why it mattered in the first place.

The Story Within the Stories

Matt Comer came out at 14 years old, in 2000, and became involved in LGBTQ+ community activism and organizing shortly after. Seven years later, he was participating in a nationwide activism campaign when an acquaintance working at Equality NC suggested he apply for a job at Qnotes.

At the time, Comer was still in college. He had been writing a blog and knew that he wanted his future to involve LGBTQ+ advocacy. He had no idea exactly what that career would look like.

“I did not really see myself becoming a professional journalist,” he said.

What he soon realized was he would find a place where his passion for justice and activism could be used in a way that helped people. He signed on to become Qnotes' editor. The opportunity to work for a publication like Qnotes felt like fate.

Growing up in Winston-Salem and coming out so young, Comer said he had few connections to the broader LGBTQ+ community. Qnotes became a way to see beyond the boundaries of his immediate life.

“It was my window as a teenager in Winston-Salem into the broader, wider world,” he said.

In his new role at the publication that captured his own attention, he realized he had the opportunity to help produce that same window for someone else.

“I felt incredibly honored to be ushered into a role to report and chronicle the newspaper that I grew up reading,” Comer said.

While Comer’s story of coming to Qnotes is uniquely his, it’s not the only one. His favorite words, everybody has a story to tell, echoed through the staff of the legacy newspaper for why they chose to pursue their jobs. This is especially true for Jim Yarbrough, whose experience with Qnotes dates to when the publication wasn’t even a newspaper yet.

Leading the Way to Legacy

Ask Yarbrough about his story of finding Qnotes, he will tell the story as if he's putting together a story for the newspaper itself.

Publisher Jim Yarbrough smiling at the camera (QNotes)

Before becoming the publisher who would shepherd Qnotes through four decades, Yarbrough moved to Hartsville, South Carolina, and worked in retail. After he was fired for being gay, he eventually moved to Charlotte. Yarbrough got involved with the Queen City Quordinators, or QCQ, a fundraising-focused organization that put on the state’s first Pride events.

The QCQ began publishing a small monthly newsletter called “Q-Notes” in 1983. That newsletter ended in 1984 but was reborn as a monthly print newspaper in June 1986, timed with National LGBT Pride Month. A few years later, when the QCQ dissolved, Yarbrough bought the publication. He said he did not buy it because the business looked easy. He bought it because he believed the community needed it.

“It was too important to let the newspaper go,” he said. “There were all kinds of stories that needed to be talked about and publicized, and it was vital to the community.”

Telling the Stories that Mattered

In 1989, the AIDS crisis was at its peak. For LGBTQ+ people in the Carolinas, finding information could be difficult, especially information specific to their own lives and community. Qnotes became a lifeline.

Yarbrough remembers the newspaper as a source for information about everything from AA meetings and churches to clubs and politics. It was a place where people could find out what was happening and where issues that might otherwise go unreported could be publicized and discussed.

“There was no other source people could go to,” he said.

It wasn’t all serious though. Yarbrough said writers would sometimes write stories purely for entertainment. Music, arts, and theatre would regularly show up in a column. Even pets became a mainstay in the publication because that was what the community wanted to see.

A story about dating on the internet featured in Qnotes' Q-Living section (DigitalNC)

He believes that helps explain why Qnotes survived. The publication was not created as a vanity project or to make money. LGBTQ+ publications emerged because mainstream newspapers often were not actively or even accurately reporting on LGBTQ+ life. Even when they did, they covered major headlines while glossing over the smaller, heartfelt community stories that publications like Qnotes capture so well.

However, when it comes to writing their own history, Yarbrough and Comer agree there’s no better people to tell the hard-hitting stories than the staff at Qnotes.

When News Becomes Bigger

One of the things Comer often says about his profession is journalists write the first draft of history. During his years as editor, he had a front-row seat to events that would be etched into the past and preserved for the future. One of those stories had such a profound effect on him that it remains his favorite to this day.

In October 2014, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on marriage equality opened the door to same-sex marriage throughout the Fourth Circuit before marriage equality became nationwide.

Comer camped outside the Mecklenburg County courts, waiting for the decision to be handed down. When the ruling was finally made public, the Register of Deeds office closed before anyone could get down there. The next morning, Comer arrived early. There was already a line.

“It’s one thing to read about them or see pictures of these couples,” Comer said. “But it was entirely different to be there and witness it.”

The couples waiting to marry were no longer an abstract political issue. They were people, just like him, and Comer had the privilege of telling their stories.

“It was a very emotional time,” he said.

For Yarbrough, picking that one moment that sticks with him is much harder.

“There have simply been too many,” he said.

If he had to choose, the publication's 40th-anniversary issue included 48 stories that had made an impact, touching on subjects including the Campus Pride embezzlement story, the end of the AIDS epidemic and celebrations of life for people who had been murdered in hate crime cases.

But Qnotes' history is not solely a history of crises and political fights.

Yarbrough points to Charlotte Pride as one example of how much the community itself has changed. He has watched it grow from people gathering together in a park into one of the largest festivals and parades in the Carolinas.

A community is not defined only by the discrimination it faces. It is also defined by the ways its members celebrate, create, fall in love, build families, make art, care for one another and simply live. Qnotes has been there to document it all.

Four decades of Qnotes is also four decades of evidence that LGBTQ+ life in the Carolinas is far bigger than the political arguments that so often surround it.

This ideal, in itself, is why Yarbrough thinks independent journalism is so important, even when the cost to open the doors every day can only be described as “very tough.”

The Cost of Staying

Keeping an independent community newspaper alive for 40 years is not easy. Yarbrough is candid about that. There have been periods when his paycheck sat in a drawer, uncashed, for weeks or even months.

“If we weren’t doing it, I don’t know who would,” he said. “But it’s important. And anything important is worth working hard for.”

That work has required a combination of advertising, reader revenue and grants. Yarbrough credits his participation in the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative and relationships with other media organizations with helping him learn about grant opportunities he had not previously known were available.

Advertising remains critical, and the pandemic dealt the newspaper a serious financial blow. Some advertising disappeared during COVID-19 and has not returned.

That leaves the publication confronting the same challenge faced by much of local journalism—sustaining the work when the traditional business model is no longer enough.

The digital version of the Qntoes 40th anniversary cover.

Yarbrough has an answer that is both practical and personal. He says readers are part of the equation. He claims if 1,000 readers committed to giving Qnotes $5 each month, the publication would have a much stronger financial foundation. The message is not a fundraising pitch. It is a reminder that community journalism exists because a community decides that it should.

Recently, Yarbrough made even more emotional decisions to keep the legacy alive. Decades passed with Qnotes as a printed newspaper. At its 40th anniversary party, staff announced a transition to a digital-focused newspaper with a couple of print editions released each year.

Yarbrough saw this as an opportunity. Moving away from the regular print schedule could free time and resources for other forms of journalism. Qnotes could pursue projects such as its podcast and YouTube shows, leaning into the now digital-heavy world we live in.

It once again points to one of the reasons Qnotes has survived. It adapts and changes without abandoning the reason it exists. It began as a newsletter. And now, after four decades, it is reshaping its relationship with print. The technology keeps changing, but the need to tell the story does not. The people who tell those stories adapt and change right with it, knowing their words, now on a screen, are just as important now as they were before.

The People Behind the Paper

Yarbrough is also quick to make clear that the story of Qnotes is not the story of one publisher. Over the years, the publication has had many staff members. There have been editors, reporters, photographers, graphic designers, distributors and others whose work may not always have been visible to readers. Yarbrough remembers them all.

He credits the people who worked at Qnotes over the years with helping make the publication what it became. Some took on additional distribution work to earn a little more money. Others brought skills in photography, design or reporting.

“I value each of their values, support, work, and everything else they brought to the table,” Yarbrough said. “I appreciate each and every one of them.”

Their collective work is part of the newspaper's legacy. Their headlines, photography, words, and everything in between captured and archived LGBTQ+ history. That archive is more than a collection of newspapers. It is a record of who was here. Who protested. Who celebrated. Who died. Who married. Who ran for office. Who made art. Who opened a business. Who organized a meeting. Who needed help and who came to do it. Who, for a moment, needed to see their own life reflected back at them.

“What made it more special is it was a community newspaper,” Comer said. “I was not sitting atop some large mainstream daily newspaper. I was doing grassroots community journalism for people and getting connected with the community in a way a lot of reporters aren’t able to in some newspapers.

That may ultimately sum up the legacy of Qnotes after 40 years. Not simply that a newspaper endured, but that it helped a community understand the power of telling its own story and making that story visible.

And somewhere, perhaps, another teenager is opening a Qnotes story and discovering what Comer once discovered: a window into a wider world, a sense of possibility and proof that they are not alone.