In a story pubished after our Wet Spots deadline last Friday, the porn-obsessed savvy New York Times examined the business end of the adult industry—which oddly enough, is discussed in the same bloodless prose you might find in a story about airline bankruptcies or the real estate market. As you know, adult entertainment is the largest industry in the universe and it's in deep trouble these days ... and the internet, which has been the biggest boon for porn since the VCR, is soon going to destroy it completely. The Times took a crack at solving that riddle, and while the piece is filled with a lot of the same tidbits we've been hearing for the last several months—DVD sales are down, too many titles being released, amateurs taking over, "low barriers to entry," etc.—they at least take problem seriously and actually reached out to some of the players in the game to get their perspective. (Plus, they added this pretty graph.) Maybe we shouldn't be surprised anymore that the country's most influential paper can talk about porn like it's any other business, but since a lot of outfits still panic at the mere suggestion of boobies, we still do a double take when it's happens. That liberal media bias is finally doing something right.

· For Pornographers, Internet's Virtues Turn to Vices (nytimes.com)

Previously: Leonard Nimoy's Nude Mission, Deep Inside Kink Dot Com: Smut With A Smile, The New York Times' New "Zoo" Review, NY Times: True.com's False Advertising?, The Not-So-Pretty Side of Hi-Def Porn, Gray Ladies: The New York Times Does De'Bella

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