Prostitution Remains Standard-Examiner Front Page News

A few queries re the Standard-Examiner's ongoing "Ogden prostitution" series

Embarrassing though it is for your prudish blogmeister to say it, it appears that the Standard-Examiner has recently developed a "prostitution fetish." During the past week, our home town newspaper has previously run no fewer than five Ogden prostitution pieces, most of them plastered all over the Std-Ex front page.

In our never ending effort to conform to the standards of the family-friendly blog that we are, we in the straight-laced editorial offices of Weber County Forum have heretofore averted our eyes, and basically ignored the recent Std-Ex flurry of prurient and voyeuristic ink, hoping against hope that this line of reporting would simply go away.

Alas, the Std-Ex is back at it again, with two more prostitution stories today, each of them again appearing right there on the front page, in full frontal view of children, prudes and everybody!

Prostitution arrests surprise
Recent Ogden sting results in 8 arrests

So we've decided to break our editorial silence. We can no longer hold our tongue. Having plowed through all this material, we ask: What's the Standard-Examiner's point, exactly?

Is this "prostitution series" intended to inform the lumpencitizens that the oldest profession is actually being practiced right here in our hard-scrabble blue collar town? (We think most folks already knew that. In a town that's notorious for its downtown "red light alley," this info isn't exactly news to us.)

Does this series represent an attempt to portray Boss Godfrey as a True Crime Fighter? (Most of us know the real truth about that.)

Does the front page placement of these lurid stories merely represent a Std-Ex attempt to increase news stand sales? (Times are tough for the print media these days, and we confess we wouldn't rule that out.)

And we'll also pose a tangential question: Does the placement of these stories on the front page of the Standard-Examiner violate community standards of good taste?

At least one Std-Ex reader answered that question yesterday, with a hearty and resounding "Yes!"

So we now turn to our readers for their take. What's up with the Standard-Examiner, we ask?