Revenge of the Publishers

In apparent anger over Craigslist's low to nothing charges for the placement of classified ads, mainstream news organizations have prodded their respective representatives and contacts in law enforcement to pursue the classified ad giant relentlessly. Meanwhile, the print media attacks of Craigslist worms its way into the minds of law enforcement everywhere. Except that most, such as NY Attorney General Cuomo, conveniently forgot about the explicit ads in other publications. Buckmaster posted several links on his own blog to several of those unmentionable ads published by Village Voice Media. At least that's what it looks like, and if it looks like a duck, it usually is a duck, especially in relation to money.

Living in Orlando is almost like being on another planet, for a multitude of reasons, but for the sake of this discussion, I'm referring to escort ads and all other adult business ads. You see, here in Orlando we have the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI), and there's no way that any print media is going to get away with publishing those unmentionable ads. If you have any doubt about this, feel free to contact the Orlando Weekly, AT&T, or R.H. Donnelly's Embarq Central Florida phonebook. Just ask any of the responding representatives about placing an ad in the "escort services" or "adult" categories, and they'll tell you that there are no such categories, if they don't hang-up on you first. A little more than a year ago the MBI arrested several ad representatives at the Orlando Weekly, and then took it a step further and charged the newspaper with racketeering. This is also how the agency managed to get those categories removed from the yellow page phonebooks in Central Florida back in October of 1996 – and they haven't existed since.

Not only do we not get to view explicit ads here in Orlando, we have these categories omitted entirely. It's like living in a fantasy land for children, which is great, unless you're an adult. Publications that have adult advertisements here get more attention than armed robbers. So Mr. Buckmaster – be careful what you say, or before you know it, the MBI might be training law enforcement personnel in a city near you.