Other LanguagesBy now you may have heard about the Village Voice Corporation's attempt to downplay the scope of child sex trafficking. If not, read Lynn Varner's latest explanation:
Village Voice Media's preoccupation of late with the precise number of victims of sex trafficking has less to do with accuracy and more to do with trying to distance itself from the seamy underworld of underage prostitution.
Now that's a fool's errand.
The media conglomerate makes plenty of dough in its adult section, backpage.com, selling escort services and personal ads. But let's get real. Men are not flocking to the section to find escorts for dinner or the opera. They're looking to pay for sex.
Village Voice — which owns Seattle Weekly — has created a healthy profit center built on recession-proof markets: prostitution and sexual exploitation.
How much does the Voice make from its prostituion ads? I happened upon an interesting analysis today by the AIM Group: