Dailies Pursue Sex Ads

By: Mark Fitzgerald Imagine an entire advertising category that sells itself. Even as newspaper ad reps must scratch and claw to sell space everywhere else in the paper, these ads not only come flying in over the transom -- the advertisers are willing to pay rates that are double, triple, or even quadruple the price of other linage in the paper.

Welcome to the world of "adult" advertising, or, to put it more plainly, sex ads: the classified and display ads for strip clubs, "massage" parlors and spas, "escorts," phone-sex lines, "domination" services, pornographic video and bookstores, "model" agencies -- even "erotic" bakeries. It's a newspaper advertising category that for decades has been owned lock, stock, and fur-lined handcuffs by alternative papers. But now increasing numbers of daily newspapers are coyly succumbing to the many seductions of sex ads.

Tiny display ads for massage spas are ubiquitous in the sports sections of daily newspapers. At many dailies, the classified personal-ads column aren't just for novenas to St. Jude anymore. On a typical day last week, for instance, the Chicago Sun-Times' "Strictly Personal" classified category included ads offering phone numbers and come-ons for "horny local girls," "cheating housewives," and "local nasty girls." Other dailies, such as The Dallas Morning News, are beginning to accept ads in the much more controversial "escort" category.

A few other dailies are explicitly going after adult ads -- though they maintain strict standards on language and images. The jointly operated Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News now have a dedicated account executive for the "adult entertainment" retail ad category. The papers don't accept ads for escorts or phone sex, but the category has grown to such a point that, two weeks ago, Detroit Newspapers hired a copy editor whose sole job will be to approve the ad text. "What's offensive to one person may not be to another, so it is helpful if there is one person making the calls," says Lynn Curtis, product-development sales manager for Detroit Newspapers. Curtis has a 15-year-old son and says, "He is my gut test."

Among the lines the Detroit papers draw: massage parlors can appear in display, but not classified, ads. Why? "There's no touching in classified," Curtis explains.

Ironically, just as dailies begin to pursue the adult category, alternatives are asking themselves if tacky sex ads -- no matter how lucrative -- are actually limiting their potential growth in revenue and readership.

At the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' (AAN) 25th annual convention a few weeks ago in Madison, Wis., a session about adult advertising was among the most popular offerings. "I worry about the slippery slope of pursuing these ads," Hartford (Conn.) Advocate Advertising Manager Greg Shimer said. "I want our people to go after auto, hospitals, fashion -- the ads alternatives don't traditionally get."

Nevertheless, on July Fourth, Shimer says in a follow-up interview, the Advocate began a two-month experiment of slightly relaxed standards -- including bigger ad sizes and photographs (although only head shots are allowed) -- to attract more business to its small adult-advertising section.

Of course, in a sex-suffused society, newspapers are hardly the only print media this side of Penthouse magazine running plenty of adult ads. This year's issue of the Verizon Yellow Pages in Manhattan, for instance, carries 64 pages of listings for escort services -- exactly as many as for physicians.

Yet daily papers, which are moving into the adult category without any industrywide discussion, may want to consider why, for many alternative papers, sex ads have become an embarrassment of riches.

Are you trying to seduce me?

Sex ads have been a fact of life in alternative papers virtually since the papers emerged from their "underground" origins. But what may have seemed liberating and daring in the 1960s and '70s now strikes some publishers -- and many readers -- as sexist and sleazy in an era when the audience for alternative papers reaches far beyond the black-clothing-and-piercings crowd.

It doesn't help, either, that sex advertisers keep submitting ads that are ever-more crude. "They really try to push the boundaries," says Dallas Observer Publisher Alison Draper, who insists that photos and copy in the weekly be "as clean as possible."

Some alternatives publish so many adult ads they risk shifting their image from edgy and hip to something closer to the kind of publication you find shrink-wrapped behind the register at convenience stores. There's a point where the adult category can change from a cash crop to an advertising version of kudzu. "You're always kind of riding this line of how big do you want this section to be," Don Farley, publisher of the Baltimore City Paper, told the AAN convention.

In many markets, sex ads keep alternative papers out of prime distribution spots, such as supermarkets. Some major mainstream advertisers who stay out of alternatives tell publishers that adult ads are the reason why.

So why keep adult ads? It's the revenue, stupid. "When you take a wholesale look at our industry, most of our profit is wrapped up in those [adult-advertising] inches," says Charles Gerencser, publisher of the Pasadena (Calif.) Weekly. "Get rid of the adult, and you have an unprofitable or a marginally profitable newspaper."

At alternatives, sex ads occupy the priciest real estate in the paper. The Chicago Reader, for instance, prices display ads in the adult category at roughly double the open rate, while classifieds sell for about four times the open rate, says Publisher Jane Levine. Two times the retail display rate and three to four times the classified rate are typical premiums for adult ads, Baltimore City Paper's Farley says.

By contrast, daily papers that take adult advertising rarely charge anything more than the normal classified or display rate. The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, for instance, does not accept ads for X-rated videos or escort services, and doesn't bother to ask for premiums on the ads for topless clubs, says Pat Richardson, local-retail-advertising manager.

Yet adult-category advertisers tend to be a cheery lot when it comes to paying these premiums, publishers say. A few years ago, when the City Paper was a bit less bulky and the adult category threatened to overshadow other advertising, Farley sought to stunt its growth by jacking up prices. "We tried to manage the section by rate ... but we just couldn't," Farley recalls. "We tripled their rates -- and that didn't discourage people from running the ads."

A few papers assign a part-time or even full-time ad rep to drumming up adult advertising, but they are a tiny minority. More typical is the Chicago Reader: "We don't do a thing to get them," says Publisher Levine. Daily papers, however, may find their staid image, and history of rejecting sex ads, means adult-category ads are unlikely to appear unsolicited in vast numbers.

Despite their high price, adult ads at most alternative papers come with some significant strings attached. With very few exceptions, alternatives prohibit nudity in advertisements -- and a surprising number of them forbid photographs altogether. Many papers take after the Chicago Reader, which stopped allowing photos so long ago that no one on the staff can remember when it happened.

Still, alternatives being alternatives, many publishers feel conflicted about laying down too many rules. "I think the real issue at hand is freedom of commerce and speech," Pasadena Weekly's Gerencser says. Even so, the Pasadena paper still bars most full-body shots and forbids copy that is suggestive or includes innuendo or anything that "even alludes to a sexual act," Gerencser adds.

Caught in a vice

There's no doubt that alternative papers pay a price for accepting adult ads. The most common consequence is losing distribution spots.

Adult ads take up just one of the 28 to 32 pages in a typical issue of The Local Planet Weekly in Spokane, Wash., but that was enough to get the paper kicked out of the Sacred Heart Medical Center. "We are a Catholic institution, and we didn't feel that the paper fit with what we are about," says Pattie Servine, the hospital's public-relations director. She says the hospital was "getting complaints" from employees and from physicians.

"We had been in Sacred Heart since Day One," Local Planet Weekly Publisher Matthew Spaur says. "And then earlier this spring they decided the paper did not 'meet their Catholic values.' ... That drop was 500 papers a week. That was a big hit to take."

Sex ads, especially for escort services, also tend to bring alternative papers unwelcome attention from local law enforcement, suspecting -- often with considerable justification -- that "escort" is a nicer name for "prostitute." The Baltimore City Paper gets police search warrants on a "semiregular basis," Publisher Farley says. "It almost borders on harassment." Vice cops, Farley adds, "seem to be making the point that, if you're going to be in this business, you're going to be talking to us a lot."

Sex ads also cost alternative papers potential advertisers -- although how much is impossible to determine. Boston's Weekly Dig knows about former advertisers it has lost, but adult ads are staying in the paper. "I'm not going to turn down ads that amount to about 35% of gross revenue on a weekly basis," Publisher Jeff Lawrence says.

Lawrence didn't always feel that way. Going up against the Boston Phoenix, with its substantial number of high-priced pages devoted to adult advertising, he initially pitched the Weekly Dig as the alternative that didn't carry sex ads. "As time went on, I realized that was suicidal," he says. "The plain fact is, without the adult advertising, we wouldn't be publishing."

Yet, at least one alternative, the San Diego Reader, has managed to get along without sex ads since it was launched in 1972. "I have moral objections and also taste objections to it," says Editor and Publisher Jim Holman. "I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, and it's a business I didn't want to get into."

Holman figures the newspaper loses out on $1 million in revenue annually because it refuses sex ads. And while businesses often tell alternatives they would advertise if the papers would drop adult ads, that's not how it's worked out for the San Diego Reader, Holman notes. It is, however, easier getting stores to offer the paper: "We are in a lot of supermarkets now, and I suppose if we had some super-raunchy ads, we wouldn't be. But, at its root, this was a moral decision, not an appearance or business decision."

When the Boulder (Colo.) Weekly banished sex ads from its pages last November, Publisher Stewart Sallo says it was an ethical and business decision -- in that order of importance. Some of the ads were "absolutely filthy," he says, and he was increasingly uncomfortable about how they portrayed women. At the same time, he was hearing more complaints from other advertisers. Sallo says the Boulder Weekly is giving up $100,000 in annual revenue by dropping the ads. "It takes a lot of time to recoup revenue like that when you're as small as we are," he explains.

It's an indication of how different alternative papers remain that Sallo's biggest regret may be the harsh effect it's had on the advertisers -- especially the so-called escorts. "Some of the local prostitutes had come to rely on our paper as a way to make a living," he says. "I don't believe prostitution should be illegal. There are a lot worse ways of making a living."

The daily show

The Dallas Observer takes a fair amount of heat for its adult advertising, which includes a page of small display ads of escorts posing seductively with their phone number and some pithy selling point, such as "hotel-friendly" or "gorgeous transsexual."

Publisher Draper says she's "somewhat conflicted" about the ads, and in February doubled their rates in a mostly unsuccessful effort to winnow out some of the advertisers. The paper is slapping another big rate hike on adult advertisers in September.

"I think in 30 days I could replace every bit of that [adult] revenue with other ads," Draper says -- but now it looks like she doesn't have to worry about that. The reason? The Dallas Morning News began taking similar ads last month.

"Frankly, the daily accepting it is really a positive for me," Draper says, for now the Observer is not the only local paper accepting sex ads. (Doug Olsson, Morning News vice president for display advertising, did not return a phone message for comment.)

And The Dallas Morning News is far from the only daily dabbling in adult advertising: Most dailies long ago dropped explicit bans on racy and lacy ads. Only 25 will not accept ads for "X-rated" films, 11 object to some form of "adult" ads, five single out massage parlors as taboo, and four won't advertise escort services, according to the CD-ROM version of the 2002 Editor & Publisher International Year Book.

As a practical matter, though, adult advertising in dailies can be discreet to the point of obscurity. The Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal, for instance, accepts a range of adult advertisers, including licensed escort services. Yet, Advertising Director Dave Rivord says, readers are just as likely to complain about a department store's lingerie ad as anything in the adult category.

Adult advertising is as likely to show up in Bible Belt dailies as any other part of the country. In Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is getting "a large portion" of adult ads that mostly are destined for the sports pages, says Classified Manager Tangela Gibson. The typical Atlanta advertisers: porno theatres, topless clubs, massage parlors, lingerie modeling, and "maid services." The newspaper requires business licenses from all advertisers.

In conservative Utah, where managers of Salt Lake City newspapers have been feuding despite their joint operating agreement, the dailies also make odd bedfellows when it comes to sex ads. The Salt Lake Tribune, owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc., is currently publishing nearly a dozen escort ads daily, while The Deseret News, owned by the Mormon Church, rejects all adult advertising -- along with just about anything else spurned by devout Mormons, such as tobacco, gambling, coffee, and astrology. Every so often, a help-wanted escort ad slips into The Deseret News by mistake and the paper fields complaints.

Ironically, the biggest daily in Los Angeles -- the porn-video epicenter of the world -- hasn't accepted ads for X-rated films in decades, and in 1998 stopped taking any more "gentlemen's club" advertising. Advertisers "whose principal business is to provide an overtly sexual service or experience" are unwelcome even in this poor economy, the L.A. Times says. "We want all the ads we can get, but we still don't take adult ads," says Jerry Bluestein, the Times' advertising-standards coordinator.

If dailies start making some real money in adult advertising, they may find it harder to draw a line on how far they go. Consider what Jeff Lawrence, who founded Boston's Weekly Dig on the premise that it would not take sex ads, has to say now about adult advertising: "It's cash upfront. It keeps my payroll flush. It makes everything happen. What's not to like?"