Washington City Paper: ‘Will Craigslist’s New Stance on Adult Ads Save Alt-Weeklies?’
June 10, 2009 at 8:38 am by Wayne Garcia
Great article in our Washington City Paper sister pub last week by Andrew Beaujon about how the changes to adult-use ads at Craigslist could affect the alt-newspaper industry.
From the article:
Last year Craigslist, which lists 18 employees on its “about us” page, made somewhere between $20 and $80 million dollars. So why is its CEO, Jim Buckmaster, so p.o.’d about sex ads in alt-weeklies?
Because these bottom-feeding free publications are making an erotic comeback in the classifieds biz, with an assist from law enforcement.
Buckmaster has even taken to the blogosphere to air his frustrations with alt-weekly encroachment. In a recent post, he lists several titles of adult ads he found on backpage.com, a collection of classifieds sites owned by Village Voice Media (VVM). “Cum lay your hotdog on my bun for memorial day” (Dallas); “Let me put you to bed backdoor available $80? (Columbia, S.C.); “An Irish blowjob and a cum showering rainbow” (New York). He links to a screenshot of the last ad, which has photos of a woman performing fellatio.
“It’s worth noting that these ads’ TITLES ALONE contain more explicit content than you will find in all craigslist adult service ads combined,” he writes in the post.
It goes on to say that adult advertising in the Washington alt-weekly has increased since the craigslist change. Read the full ‘Will Craigslist’s New Stance on Adult Ads Save Alt-Weeklies?’
It is an interesting subject given the historical use and reliance on adult-use advertising by publications such as Creative Loafing. It always pits free speech (free love?) advocates against those who have concerns about the objectification of women and the violence that can result.
In our new CLTampa.com, the hottest-growing section seems to be the often explicit Sex & Love articles, to the point where some readers (and CL staffers, in internal discussions and e-mails) have raised questions about the balance between news and erotica/porn/sex coverage. Our publisher and classified ad manager tell me, unlike in Washington, that our adult-use advertising hasn’t seen a bump upward since the change in Craigslist policy.
