LA Daily News Exposes Porn Valley

As opposed to the NY Times' reasonably sane and balanced coverage of the adult industry lately, the LA Daily News' new week-long "Valley Exposed" series reads more like a lurid tabloid exposé than Serious Journalism, what with all those words like "secret" and "hidden" and "underground" buzzing around the first couple of paragraphs. AVN takes the writers to task for the article's inaccurasies and barely restrained hysteria, and while we in turn take issue with some of AVN's assertions (we think "several years ago" is perfectly acceptable in describing the time frame of Jenna Jameson's stint on the best seller list), we too are getting a little tired of sloppily researched mainstream porn coverage designed more to titillate suburban readerships than shed any real light on the adult industry. Then again, the series also includes an interesting sidebar on TightFit Productions' Oren Cohen and a (similarly dire yet informative) report today on Sharon Mitchell's Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation and the porn business' HIV concerns. So maybe we'll keep tuning in for the rest of the week after all.

· "Exposed: Porn In The Valley": Part I: "The Valley's Dark Secret" and Part II: "Porn And Health" (dailynews.com)
· "News Analysis: Porn Valley's Newspaper Gets Some Porn Stuff Right ... And A Bunch Wrong" (avn.com)

Previously: NY Times: Porn Economy Just As Bad As The Regular One, Deep Inside Kink Dot Com: Smut With A Smile, BBC Goes To Porn Valley, Porn on Pause @ NYT, HIV, Porn and Privacy