What the L.A. Times teaches us about porn

People who – for whatever reason – are constant readers of adult industry news should not blame the L.A. Times for publishing the umpteenth article about how the economic downturn has affected Porn Valley.

Not everyone has the free time to lurk on adult messageboards all day, where this subject is old news.

The article cites the overall dwindling of the DVD market and the prominence of free porn on the Internet as sources of the industry’s woes. It does not mention oversaturation of content, companies undercutting each other for short term gains, or that porn has simply found its true value.

But that doesn’t mean adult industry personnel can’t learn something from the article, published after reporter Ben Fritz attended Hustler’s 35th anniversary party.

For example, just as porn is credited with spurring online commerce to new heights, LA Times photographer Anne Johansson snapped an almost-upskirt photo of Savannah Stern leaning on her soon-to-be-former Mercedes that was straight out of the ClubJenna playbook.

Not only that, but AVN president Paul Fishbein also finally admitted that the widely-quoted figure his magazine circulated in 2006 as the amount porn makes annually was “an educated guess.”

(Someone from a rival publication forwarded me that link, as if to prove Fishbein’s duplicity. Doubtless Fishbein would have qualified the $13 billion figure if he’d been more educated about making educated guesses.)

Further, Free Speech Coalition director Diane Duke acknowledged that it was counterintuitive for a porn company owner to share his finances.

“Almost all of the companies in our industry are privately held,” Duke said, “and they keep the cards close to their chests.”

Damn right. In the article, Savannah Stern said she once made $150,000 a year but now makes a third of that. How productive would it be if she were able to see the balance sheets of the companies she worked for and to know how much money each company made from the scenes she’d appeared in, and then get accountant-certified residuals? Not productive at all.

Objectivity in reporting is mostly impossible, and the placement of quotes within a story often provides clues to what a reporter wants to emphasize. While Fritz does a great job of getting a number of executive and “middle class” sources for his story, such as Fishbein, Evan Seinfeld, Vivid co-founder Bill Asher (Steve Hirsch was not on media duty that day), Alexa Jordan, and makeup artist Kelly LaBanco (who said her appearance in the Times story scored her an interview for an HBO documentary), his final quote from Stern seemed a little judgmental:

“I wish I would have never gotten into it,” Stern said of her career in porn. “When you get used to a certain lifestyle, it’s really hard to cut back and realize this may not be forever.”

This would probably not have been the final quote if the article were about the plumbing industry.

Ditto gangbang director Matt Morningwood (who also made news recently by shooting porn on an iPhone for Pink Visual). Morningwood was given just enough rope to hang himself in a “Let them eat cake”-style comment:

“A few years ago the girls we got were OK, but not stellar models, and we were sometimes paying $2,500,” said porn director Matt Morningwood, referring to a website he shoots for that features one woman and multiple male partners.

“Nowadays some of the top-tier models will do that scene for us and you’re looking at maybe $1,800. I’m happy for the production, but I feel bad for exploiting the girls’ situation.”

The one septuagenarian who still gets home delivery of the LA Times just spat out his coffee and said, “SEE? They exploit them! SEE?”

At the Hustler party, I talked with Stern, Jordan, and LaBanco at length. I never asked how much they were making (Stern and Jordan made $300 each, apparently) to be there, a question that never crossed my mind.

At the time, I thought the sheer number of girls running around in nothing other than wings and horns signaled good times for me.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Hustler’s Inferno; Porn musical to give popshotys a voice; Inspectors visit AIM, and porn luminaries discuss testing and condoms
See also: Tough times in the L.A. porn industry

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Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

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