Don't Look in the Back! makes a great title for a blood-and-guts horror flick, or maybe a men's prison movie. It also serves as my mother's warning for anyone reading Fort Worth Weekly.

A year ago, Mom was proud when her son took a job writing in-depth stories about hard-hitting topics at a publication that boldly goes where mainstream newspapers won't. But her pride dimmed after fetching her first Weekly at a Granbury restaurant. The newspaper's final pages smacked her with flesh, curves, come-ons, and photos of near-naked women in ads promising "sexy chat," "passion and pleasure," "casual sex," and "sex tonight!"

I'm fairly certain my mother has had sex. (Thanks Mom; and you, too, Dad, you tiger!) But that's her private business, or it was until I started writing this story. (I've suddenly been struck with a vision ... it's a tree ... a Christmas tree ... and underneath...a lump of coal, with a tag that says "Nice article. Love, Mom and Dad.") Adult entertainment ads, as they're known in the biz, embarrass my mother, and she gives a little speech when offering friends the latest Weekly: "Read my son's story -- but don't look in the back!"

Fort Worth Weekly is among 120 or so alternative newsweeklies nationwide, an estimated 80 percent of which publish adult entertainment ads drenched in sex. The ads bother some people and once in a while spur businesses to yank newspapers from stands located in or near their shops. Alternative newsweeklies deem the ads worthwhile because they provide green stuff -- an estimated $50 million a year, industry-wide -- that pays light bills. Mainstream publications usually won't print the ads, and so alternative weeklies, with a seemingly captive market, charge a premium.

However, the alternative news industry is in the midst of change -- an evolution rather than a revolution. In some cities, papers are cutting back on raunchy ads. In other places, publishers continue to enlarge their red-light sections.

The interesting thing is that both sides use the same arguments to defend their positions: the need to make money and do good. Do adult ads bring in more money or drive it away? Do ads depicting women as prostitutes follow the best traditions of free speech or the worst tradition of degrading women and supporting crime?

Publishers balance morality, capitalism, and free speech to develop policies on how much sex to allow. Some newspapers have a higher bare-body count than others. The Weekly is middle of the pack, not as explicit as newspapers on the East and West Coast or at neighboring alternative weekly Dallas Observer. Images of boobs, butts, and bulges may be dwindling in the Weekly, but this paper peddles its flesh. NEXT »

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