Wow, the newly invigorated Boston Herald is really punching up these days: Yesterday, it ran a shocking expose on how a newspaper that's been dead for six years, its archives now stored at Northeastern, used to run lots of ads for escort services.
Now that America is woke to the plight of human trafficking after the scandal embroiling Robert Kraft and his trips to the Orchids of Asia Spa, should Northeastern University come clean about a dirty little secret hidden deep within its archives?
Woke? Dirty little secret? Is the Herald writer the one person in Boston who never saw the Phoenix's "Adult" section?
One can only hope he next turns his eyes inward, to the days when the editors at the Hearst paper in Boston (part of that proud Herald heritage) would ask their police reporters "is it dark out there?" about victims of violent crimes to determine if their attacks merited attention in print.
In the meantime, here's the Herald story, but you'll need a Herald subscription to read it.
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Comments
But but but
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:09pm
HER E-MAILS!
This is some weapons-grade whataboutism here. Yes the "adult" ads WERE sleasy. Yes the Phoenix MADE a lot of money on them.
So they are upset about archives? Really? I guess that is consistent with the current war on Facts, History, and Data, and anything that documents Reality.
Sigh.
Human sex trafficking
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:09pm
The owner was well known for being 'progressive' . Go figure.Times certainly change.
It's an issue worth exploring
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:24pm
But to frame it as "a dirty little secret," when everybody knew about it? And to make it sound like Northeastern's somehow engaged in a coverup? The writer was trying too hard (or maybe his editors were).
Not just the Phoenix
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:10pm
I used to see multipage adult ads sections/inserts other free alternative weeklies in other cities.
At one Ivy, you'd see indoor free paper stands in uni buildings with the paper taken, but a large percentage of the adult sections pulled out and left behind.
I recall these included "escort" sections, labeled as such. Also, ads for strip clubs, phone sex ads, and personals classifieds before CraigsList. I don't recall whether they had "massage" place ads.
Even more infamously
By ScottB
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:49pm
Backpage started out as part of Village Voice Media.
If memory serves,
By perruptor
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:12pm
The Boston Herald used to run ads for massage parlors and strip clubs. Not sure about escort services, but I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Porn Theatres and Lingerie Places
By John Costello
Thu, 12/16/2021 - 4:23pm
On the racing page, the Herald used to run ads for the Pussycat in the CZ and a place in Revere that sold lingerie.
I remember being in Santa Monica along Third Street in the late 90's and seeing a Pussycat Theatre and I had thought I had been time warped to 1983.
Employing Howie Carr is
By Kinopio
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:12pm
Employing Howie Carr is dirtier than a strip mall hand job.
Are we talkin' King Arthur's
By Big Ev (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:23pm
Are we talkin' King Arthur's ?
Yeah, but you have to admit,
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:47pm
Yeah, but you have to admit, Howie is hilarious .
"Strip mall"?
By perruptor
Sat, 05/04/2019 - 7:23am
Not sure why you think a row of small retailers is especially dirty.
Herald bombshell: NU honors paper that trafficked in sex-slavery
By O-FISH-L
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:18pm
A more accurate headline wouldn't fit your narrative, NU honors paper that trafficked in sex-slavery. There is no bombshell in reporting that the Boston Phoenix ran ads for escorts which were in most cases prostitutes controlled by pimps. Everyone knows that ugly history. The bombshell is that in the #metoo era, far-left Northeastern University would choose to not only honor a company that survived on the backs (literally) of sex-slaves, but denigrates those victims today as willing "romantic mates." As we tear down monuments to those who trafficked in slavery, let's make sure there is no honor in sex-slavery either. Well done, Herald. More of this, please.
Honors? You don't go to the library much, I take it
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:27pm
They didn't "honor" anybody.
They accepted an archive of possibly historically interesting documents that otherwise might have just wound up in the trash (isn't that what happened to the Herald archives when they moved from Wingo Square?). That's hardly the same as giving Mindich an honorary degree. And it's what libraries do all the time.
Didn't the Boston Phoenix have early reporting on
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 4:18pm
Archdiocese molestation scandal, before Globe Spotlight?
That alone is worth archiving. And they had some other noteworthy reporting, some of it by Dan Kennedy.
It's historical record, and important to archive properly.
Yes, they had the story first
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:57pm
Kristen Lombardi, specifically, wrote the first news account related to the scandal in March, 2001, about ten months before the first Spotlight story (which is not to take away from the amazing work the Globe reporters did to advance the story, but, no, they were not first with it).
On the Seaport District
By tachometer
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 10:12pm
I'm picturing Kristen today telling someone that she had the scoop..."I coulda' been somebody! I coulda' won a Pulitzah!"
Huh?
By Peanut (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:32pm
Northeastern's Snell Library is "honoring" the Boston Phoenix by holding the newspaper's records? Okay.
You call yourself a cop?
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:33pm
If nothing else, these archives could help solve a cold case years down the line.
Then again, you probably tossed a lot of rape kits when the victim's SSN was from out of state ...
Mall cop
By Parkwayne
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 3:03pm
No way Fish was a real cop and based on my assumptions of his age, I have always figured he dodged Vietnam too.
Just like his buddy Trump
By Kinopio
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 3:52pm
Just like his buddy Trump
I always thought
By SamWack
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:29pm
that he died in Vietnam. His bone spurs got infected. He's been pissed about it ever since.
Fish is awful, but dodging
By ZachAndTired
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:54pm
Fish is awful, but dodging Vietnam and not being a cop are two things that would make him slightly cooler in my book.
Seconded
By Will LaTulippe
Sun, 05/05/2019 - 8:31pm
No, seriously, explain to somebody who was born in 1983 like me why anybody should be mocked in 2019 for not going to some stupid jungle war that we lost in 1975.
Trump sucks. A reason *isn't* that he dodged Vietnam.
So your advice is to destroy
By Vicki
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:39pm
So your advice is to destroy the evidence of the kind of ads the Phoenix ran?
As usual
By Coyote137
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:56pm
you refuse to participate in the conversation in good faith.
Except republicans are
By Kinopio
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:09pm
Except republicans are against tearing down pro slavery monuments. Like when a Trumper drove into a crowd and killed a woman because he was mad that people were against a confederate monument. Trump called those violent white supremacists "very fine people".
Please try to stick to the topic at hand
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:59pm
Difficult, I know, but give it a shot.
"far-left Northeastern University"
By Miaow (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 4:29pm
Oh, come on. I'm not saying Northeastern is conservative, but this is just silly. I went to Hampshire - now that was a far-left college. I also went to Northeastern - moderate by comparison. I suppose you consider Trump "University" mainstream?
Google first.
By bibliotequetress
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:04pm
Before you pontificate about what an archives does, you should learn what an archives does.
Archives are the documentary by-product of human activity retained for their long-term value. They provide evidence and explanation both for past actions and current decisions. (h/t Internat'l Council on Archives).
The past actions may be ethical, unethical, or morally neutral; the records are historical evidence of those actions regardless.
The Northeastern University Archives also hold the papers of Catholic terrorist John Salvi, who held a conservative world view closer to you than to those of us who are liberal. Northeastern does not endorse Salvi or his thinking, but determined his letters are of historical significance.
Retaining the archives of an organization-- a business, NGO, university, government, fraternal org, whatever-- is not an act of "honoring" it. It's preserving historical evidence.
The Holocaust Museum in Washington is not "honoring" the administrators of Dachau by retaining their papers. The University of North Carolina is not "honoring" slave traders by retaining financial and business documents related to the trade of humans in the Americas-- the largest such archives in the United States.
I did part of my archival training program with an assistant archivist for the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. He was not honoring Slobodan Milošević, nor are the Hague archives.
Desmond Tutu gave the keynote address at CITRA in 2003. This is what he said about archives:
Bibliotequetress
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:41pm
[img]https://www.ethnolink.com.au/wp-content/uploads/20...
Seconded!
By Michael Kerpan
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 8:03pm
;-)
aw, thanks,swirly!
By bibliotequetress
Sat, 05/04/2019 - 3:42pm
!
I'm not going to get into politics...but...
By tachometer
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 10:26pm
Let's just say that it seems like there are a lot of people in DC who are demonstrating a very solid understanding of the power that contemporaneous documentation has.
That's what those newspapers are, a first hand and contemporaneous record of that time. It has to be taken in context but its value should never be in dispute. Even those old escort ads in the back of the newspaper may end up being as informing to future generations as Roman graffiti is to us today.
The Number
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 1:56pm
No mention of the days when The Herald or Record American or whatever it was used to "secretly" print "the number", a game run by organized crime?
You want dirt?
By BostonDog
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:01pm
You should see their archive of gardening magazines. And they have pictures too.
(Thank you Victor Lundberg)
Not ones to rest on their
By Rob (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:11pm
Not ones to rest on their laurels, the Herald will follow-up this bombshell with another earth-shaking expose in the Sunday edition - urging University of Virginia to come clean about the dirty little secret of Thomas Jefferson having been a slave owner!
Obviously this is a tie into
By Patriciax (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:44pm
Obviously this is a tie into the Globes desire to see the Kraft tape. I think some people are trying (hard) to tie Kraft in with sex trafficking.
If everyone's concern suddenly is sex trafficking, I see a good tie in with the Phoenix. Very few of you are mentioning the angle that the Phoenix may have been promoting human trafficking.
Odd
Obviously?
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:31pm
Guy overreached with a lame analogy, then. Maybe if the Phoenix were still around, it would almost make sense, but they're not, and it doesn't.
It was no hidden secret
By StillFromDorchester
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:55pm
But it did put the Phoenix down into the gutter on how it earned money.
Some of the people who worked at the Phoenix and now pontificate on WGBH about naughty things said on Sports radio or whatever, are raging hypocrites. Being politically incorrect today is more troubling than earning money from prostitution back in the day I guess.
That said,I have no problem with the Archives being kept at Northeastern or anyplace else.
I'm sure some people who worked for the Phoenix despised those ads and just wanted to write.
ummm
By berkleealum
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:59pm
human trafficking =/= sex work
eta: for clarity, though the two overlap at times the columnist doesn't bother to do any research to support the claims of sex trafficking.
The Phoenix escort ads and even shady things like Backpage
By ScottB
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 3:53pm
Were double-edged swords. Both were absolutely used by human traffickers and pimps, but they were also used by sex workers who were in that line of business by choice. And for people in that latter group, it was safer than trying to pick up work on the street.
Interesting that NU has the archive (and makes sense)
By Friartuck
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 3:56pm
A former friend put herself through Northeastern working for Lindsay's All-American Girls...
At the same time, a former roommate put himself through MIT as an escort but he advertised solo in Bay Windows.
Me, I was trying my best to give it away at that age, with very limited success.. despite the tips in allure and flirtation they were giving me....
Meanwhile, the Globe is
By anon (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 4:06pm
Meanwhile, the Globe is assigning their reporters to investigate stuff like why there are two CVS locations almost across the street in Coolidge Corner. And then even publish it, despite not even answering the question.
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/04/24/...
Mommy - I don't like the
By Hype Express (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 4:34pm
Mommy - I don't like the Herald!
And old news is front page news at the Globe too
By Irma la Douce
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:05pm
Any ideas why this article, published in 2015, has been #3 of the "Most Read Articles" on the Globe website for most of today?
Questions linger over Tom Brady’s relationship with ‘body coach’
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/12/19/patr...
Because people still want to read it?
By bibliotequetress
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 6:08pm
I don't get it myself-- few things I care less about than Brady's woo eating habits-- but it must still get clicks so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What is more respectable?
By Kapil
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 4:45pm
A Loser/Incel who pays top dollar for a high end, Eastern European escort or the same Loser trolling Tinder, meeting a woman with body image issues who works payroll for a company on 128, feigning interest by texting, taking her out to dinner at Cheesecake Factory, going all the way at her place later, only to never talk to her again?
Which course of action is more immoral to all of you?
somebody needs to get laid...
By Old Groucho (not verified)
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:23pm
.
I think somebody did,
By perruptor
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 9:40pm
and they just told you about it...
Keep your fantasies to yourself
By adamg
Fri, 05/03/2019 - 5:26pm
Mark, please try to keep on topic.
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