Alt weekly busted for running escort service ads

Not that escort service ads are the classiest thing, but this is kind of scary...

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-bk-weeklyarrest101907,0,2397550.story

Law enforcement-officials this afternoon arrested three Orlando Weekly managers on charges of aiding and abetting prostitution.

Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation agents arrested director of classified advertising Jarrell B. Martin, 43; line account executive Katherine Casey Miller, 27; and display account executive Christopher M. Whiting, 37; while they were working at a job fair sponsored by the Weekly at the downtown Marriott Hotel.

The Weekly's downtown offices also were served notice on racketeering charges for contributing to the prostitution industry. Officials said that the newspaper's advertising executives also helped escort services design ads that would cloak them from the eyes of law-enforcement officers.

 

My God, escort services, strip clubs and adult chat services are staple advertisers in alt weeklies. Looks like there's a D.A. or a vice cop with a little too much time on his hands.

 

This is scary stuff. If a guy buys a car, and then uses it as the wheel-man in a bank robbery, are they going to arrest the car salesman?

 

it wasn't that long ago, maybe 10 years or so, that the dallas morning news ran escort ads in their service directory of the classifieds.

 

Wow, no other alt-weekly runs such ads of moral degradation. Way to go, government. :

 

Seems to me this tracks with the efforts in some other cities. Nashville's big alt-weekly went through a similar process a couple of years back.

 

Somebody's listening to personal lords and saviors again.

 

Not just alt-weeklies. I just put down a major (six-figure circ.) Gannett daily with a sports agate page that had at least a half-dozen of those ads.

 

So does my telephone book. Is someone going to go after Ma Bell next?

Good God (literally, likely).

 

i think a lot of these weeklies are doing the kind of journalism that scares people in positions of authority

and this is their way of fighting back

scary

 

Good lord, you're kidding, right?

I've got about four alt weeklies within three hours of me and they're all focused on one of three things: 1. some broad issue like abortion, healthcare, smoking bans 2. The local music scene 3. Trashing the bigger papers in the areas - the same ones they take all their news from.

Every now and then they get a nut, but for every major success I can point to a defamation suit they lost. Seriously.