Last week in this space, I wrote a fairly long explanation of our ad
acceptance policy (the short version: We run virtually everything that isn’t
illegal or deceptive), as a response to an ongoing “Postmarks” debate over the
sex-related ads which appear in the Chronicle. Not surprisingly, this in
turn provoked more responses, which appear below. All for the best – no doubt
about it. Some of this week’s letter-writers seemed to sense that letters like
these make us uncomfortable, that we’d rather see this debate be swept under
the rug. If that was the impression I gave, that’s my mistake, for I can assure
you that all of us here would rather see our pages filled with this sort of
debate than with the ads which originally inspired it. I was simply trying to
explain (on readers’ request) what our policy is on the matter, and how we
arrived at it.
And to Marsha Jean: If I wasn’t completely clear on this last week: Yes, we
would almost certainly run the ad you describe.
n
A final plug: This is the last week for voting in the
Chronicle‘s 1995 Best of Austin Poll. The ballot is on p.78; there’s
also a Web page at /bestof/ which has both the ballot,
and the 1994 BOA results, for both the readers’ poll and the critics’ picks.
This article appears in June 9 • 1995 and June 9 • 1995 (Cover).