The Los Angeles Daily News (“Not the L.A. Times since 1911”) will unveil a six-part series on the San Fernando Valley porn industry starting Sunday.
The series, compiled in January and February by a team of seven writers, visits porn personalities like Wicked director Brad Armstrong, Sasha Grey, Oren Cohen of Tightfit Studios, and Teravision couple Evan Seinfeld and Tera Patrick.
I spoke with Daily News writer Brent Hopkins, to whose duties has been added the porn beat.
“Porn is part of the Valley’s community,” he said, “so we want to cover it like any other subject.”
Hopkins and I met at Porn Valley’s Lamplighter Restaurant. The question of why the Daily News didn’t interview me for the series hung like a thick cloud over the conversation. Sometimes we had to dispel the cloud with our forks.
“We completed the series in February,” he said, “but the paper kept putting off releasing it. We didn’t want to put it out on Mother’s Day, we didn’t want to put it out at Easter…”
The Daily News web team is building a special interactive module for the series, and Hopkins says that the paper will gauge the viability of future special web sections by how well the porn features go.
“We did a big story on drugs in L.A. recently,” he said, “and, after porn, we’ll just need to get rock and roll in there.”
Hopkins said his trek through porn has been painless, and that his editors have not imposed an agenda on his reportage, though at first (it seems to me) they balked at his stories seeming too supportive of the adult industry.
Part of Hopkins’ voyage of discovery revealed that things happen in porn that wouldn’t in corporate America, or the rest of the entertainment industry.
“Like, how does the porn industry deal with sexual harrassment?” he asked.
“Oh,” I laughed, thumbing through a thick wad of bills instantly wired to me from zip codes 91301 through 91618, “there isn’t any!”
Hopkins said that the News’ recent focus on porn has engendered a change in its staff’s attitude toward the subject.
“Now our 60-year-old copy editor wants to rent the R-rated version of Pirates,” he said.
“Tell her to get a goddamn hold of herself,” I said.
Previously: Case study: Porn rumors and how to handle them; Still, don’t expect more for taking one in the ass; What I’m told will soon replace “Let there be light” as the L.A. Daily News’ motto
See also: L.A. Daily News
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