The Death of (Insert Concept) Dept: Sex Writers

Art. God. Capitalism. The Horror Genre. Iceland. Situational comedy laugh tracks. Is anything left breathing? Well, according to Tracy Clark-Flory, in an intelligent piece on Salon.com, we can add Sex Writers to the growing list of conceptual themes on the ropes. She notes that the last few months - or more aptly years - have seen the dismissal of some of the top (Puns? Dead, too.) - mostly female - writers from their respective employers: Tristan Taurmino, Audacia Ray and Rachel Kramer Bussel from The Village Voice, Melissa Gira from Valleywag and Jonno D. from Fleshbot (both from Nick Denton's Gawker Media) and others. So what does it all mean? Nothing, frankly. These very, very talented writers were the unwitting victims of a) an economic meltdown not last seen since the Carniferous Period (Yes, that bad!) and b) shortsighted "Old Media" editors (not dead) who, in an effort to boost readership by "spicing up" their pages with sex columns, neglected to notice declining advertising revenue which, ironically, began long before this cottage industry sprung up. Now "New Media" (Sorry, I stop short an infanticide.) has spawned  a glut of new voices (read: bloggers) who care less about 'Why?' and more about 'What?' And since editors care less about intellectual discussions and more about revenue and because sex is still not taken as seriously of a topic as titillating sex-tape schlockfests, our voices will continue to be at the mercy of a public drowning in sexual content which, as Violet Blue reports in The San Francisco Chronicle, doesn't sell nearly as well as it once did. As Susannah Breslin aptly notes in The Reverse Cowboy: "I'm praying for a new generation of writers--who happen to write about sex." Why? Because they're the future editors of an online world where sex, sports, news and economics are just part and parcel of our daily lives.