Media

Porn again at the Globe

by Christine Hopkins

Mark Jurkowitz, the Boston Globe's media columnist, has found himself in a media muddle of his own. The appearance of an adult-Web-site tag in Jurkowitz's column on August 26 prompted Jim Romenesko to tweak Jurkowitz on his nationally read MediaGossip.com Web site.

In the column, Jurkowitz witticized that if current trends in online journalism continue, Washington Post investigative-reporting legend Bob Woodward might decide to start a Webzine called "deepthroat.com."

What Jurkowitz didn't mention was that Woodward would first have to buy the address from a site that already exists -- one dedicated to a type of exposure slightly different from learning the identity of Woodward's most famous source.

"You would have to be a very literal reader to have not understood that it was a joke," says Jurkowitz.

The Globe was entangled in a similar snafu several months ago, when it published a too-clever-by-half Web address on the front of the Business section. As it turned out, the Web address -- www.bigbucks.com -- was real, and was devoted not to large quantities of dollar bills but to hard-core pornography. (The address has since been taken over by a non-pornographic online-shopping service.)

This time around, Jurkowitz says, he and his editors made sure that his fanciful Web site was distinguished from the real thing by the lack of an "http://www." preceding "deepthroat." Also, actual Web sites mentioned in his piece were set off with parentheses. Trouble is, Web browsers generally don't require you to type in "http" or "www." Thus, all anyone needs to do is enter "deepthroat.com" to get "Hot Teen XXX Action."

"I don't think the average Boston Globe reader would know that real Web sites have `http' before them and are in parentheses," says Romenesko. "I thought the Boston Globe would have learned from last time. This thing had not one red flag, but 10 of them. I'm a technology writer, and we're very careful about planting the idea of a Web site that could lead to adult material."

Mary Jane Wilkinson, editor of the Globe's Living/Arts section, where Jurkowitz's column appears, agrees that "deepthroat.com" should have been checked by a copy editor before publication. "Our goal is to check each address," she says -- but she adds that she's received no complaints, and that she hadn't even been aware of MediaGossip.com's item before the Phoenix's inquiry.

Of course, as Jurkowitz notes, his "deepthroat.com" reference was clearly a joke. It's just that on the ever-more-crowded Web, it's getting increasingly difficult to crack a joke without running into unintended consequences.