Fumigating New York's Weeklies

Let's take a little life-in-the-big-city quiz, shall we?

1. Do companies calling themselves "escort services" usually provide:

A) Someone who will escort you to your mother's for Thanksgiving?

B) Someone who will have sex for money?

2. Does the phrase, "Sensual bodywork by stunning European Ladies – E. 60. Private. Half Hour Special," mean:

A) Orthopedic rehab is now available on the Upper East Side?

B) Prostitutes are ready to service clients in less time than it takes to fill a Duane Reade prescription?

3. Do you think the "24 Karat Ladies" tugging at their thongs are actually:

A) The North American Female Jewelers Association?

B) Not?

If you chose "B" (every time), congratulations. You are a normal New York adult. If you consistently chose "A," however, you are either very young, very naïve, or the publisher of a New York weekly that earns lots of money from classified ads.

How else to explain the fact that week after week, New York magazine, the Village Voice and, until just recently, the New York Press all publish ads showing nearly naked women under headlines like "New York Dolls" and "Wild and Fun Asian Cuties" — yet claim to have no idea what those ads are peddling?

"Our policy has been and remains that if ever the authorities bring us any evidence at all that illegal activity is behind any of the services or businesses advertised in our magazine, those advertisers will no longer be welcome," a spokeswoman for New York, Serena Torrey, said. (Hers is the mag with the "Asian Cuties" ad.)

"Our ads do not promise any sort of sexual activity," a spokeswoman for the Village Voice, Maggie Shnayerson, said. (That's where I found the "stunning European Ladies.")

Okey-dokey.

Only Tom Allon, president of Manhattan Media, the conglomeration of local publications that just bought the New York Press, was willing to admit that these classifieds are clearly for brothels. Even more remarkably, he has vowed to stop accepting them.

"Our decision was difficult in the sense that we are probably going to be losing at least $1 million in revenue," Mr. Allon said. "But it's really a business decision for the long term."

Mr. Allon, whose other publications include Our Town and the West Side Spirit, believes that in order to attract higher-class ads in the future, the New York Press had to "fumigate" itself. As for how he could he tell which ads to axe — "It's like Justice Stewart and pornography," Mr. Allon said with a laugh. "I know it when I see it."

To make his decision official, Mr. Allon even signed an anti-prostitution ad pledge, prepared by the National Organization for Women's New York City chapter. This year, NOW-NYC has made the elimination of sexual trafficking its top priority. Because many women in New York's brothels are trafficking victims, either tricked or coerced into the job, the group started focusing on classifieds as part of the booming business.

"Magazines that would never accept an ad for marijuana or illegal guns take ads for this illegal business, because prostitution is very widely accepted," the president of NOW-NYC, Sonia Ossorio, said. The acceptance is only aided by such ads: Ho hum, another page of women in their underwear begging readers to call.

That's what makes Mr. Allon such an anomaly. If he didn't dump this dreck, few people would have protested. Then again, few people have met Maria (not her real name).

"Maria was from Venezuela," a lawyer who works with abused women, Dorchen Leidholdt, said. "Her boyfriend moves here and urges her to come join him and his cousin, Rosa. She comes and he tells her now she owes them money for her travel expenses. They take her passport and tell her the way to pay off her debt is by working at Rosa's brothel on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. The first night, she's forced to have sex with 19 men."

It is years before she is freed.

Maria, in other words, was a sexual slave. And while we don't know how many women in brothels are there against their will, "I would argue that most have been subjected to coercion at some point," Ms. Leibholdt said.

This is not the kind of business any publication should be promoting. And, I would argue, they know it.