A non-profit community group on Friday denounced Chicago’s leading alternative weekly newspaper for accepting advertising that the group contends promotes prostitution.
Marching in 30-degree temperatures outside the offices of the Chicago Reader at 11 E. Illinois St., members of the Alliance for Harm Reduction called on the Reader to stop running ads for escort services.
“The Reader is normalizing and marketing prostitution by taking these ads,” said Mike Sered, 54, the group’s founder, as he distributed photocopies of Reader ads.
Sered, a recovering cocaine addict who is self-employed, said, “The ads promote prostitution and substance abuse, as well as humiliation and degradation of women.”
Jane Levine, publisher of the Chicago Reader, said the weekly newspaper planned no changes in its advertising policy.
“If he or the police have proof that there is illegal activity going on, if somebody is charged, then we will stop running their ads,” Levine said. “But short of that we are not going to stop running a whole category of advertising because this group says some of them may be prostitutes.”
Patrick Camden, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said the police department has used the ads to assist in arresting prostitutes.
“That does not mean that all the escort services that take out ads are fronts for prostitution,” he said.
The Reader earned $17 million in revenues in 1997, up from $15 million in 1996, Levine said.
The escort service ads are a lucrative addition to the paper’s bottom line, costing advertisers $80 for 25 words or less.
Ad rates for other businesses are $18.50 for 25 words or less.
“They just totally exploit women,” said Brenda Myers, 40, a certified nurse’s assistant who was marching on the picket line. Myers lives at Genesis House, a home for former prostitutes.
Sered said other publications also were at fault, citing numerous ads for escort services in the Ameritech Yellow Pages.
Kristin Kirby, an Ameritech Yellow Pages spokeswoman, said last year the company had adopted more stringent policies on the ads it will take, and those changes will be reflected in the February 1998 book.
