The answer to your question is pretty simple. I’ve been a long time fan of porn. Meanwhile, I like to understand how things that I am interested in work. When I read your site, and the same was true of Luke’s site when Luke ran it, I felt like I wasn’t reading industry PR. When talent posted, you had a sense that you were hearing from them talking about their lives (think Julie, for instance) and not some writing for them about how much they liked being slapped, punched and spit on.

I’ll miss that.

BT That really encapsulates my feelingsto a T. The last time I went to adult Expo was in 2007, right before the spinal surgery. In 08 I still wasn’t recuperated enough to deal with the crowds, the long days on my feet and all so I skipped it, I looked at how much money I saved and ever since I haven’t been able to justify going back…I loved meeting the new people and hanging out with the old ones, they are pretty much all gone now, every year I think I will go back this year, then this year I realized that I won’t know much of anyone.The people I hung with the most…JimmyD, Anna Malle (RIP), Tim and Felicia, RobbyD, Harry Weiss, Steve Sideman, Donna and AAaron, Beater, Mark Nakamura, none of them go anymore. A few still do, Adella, Tod and some others but my understanding is that the show that was once industry only, is now nothing but a fanfest…I am afraid I would be disappointed and let down. That brings me full circle to mikesouth.com I don’t want it suffer the same fate. I have great memories of Adult expo going back to way before I was in the biz….I think I want them to stay exactly that, great memories. I think mikesouth.com should go that route.

On a side note it’s always been strange to me that someone with your obvious literary expertise would find this site interesting, considering that I am such a hack, I tend to write as though I were telling it to you in person, I can tell a story OK I guess but when it comes to syntax, punctuation all all of that…well you get the idea…

That said, I made a decision very similar to yours at the end of 2012. I had been writing for the women’s magazine market in New York going back to 1986. Over the years, I’d written for basically all of the women’s books on the newsstand in your grocery store, including more than 20 years at Good Housekeeping. I also had regular gigs at Reader’s Digest, Prevention and the personal finance teams at CBS News and Yahoo Finance. I was one of those lucky freelancers who worked constantly. There were editors I’d had a relationship with for over 25 years.

Then, it all changed. Really talented senior editors were either let go because they made a lot of money, or offered retirement packages. In one week, the whole personal finance editorial team was let go from CBS.

In the fall of 2012, I went to NYC to schmooze. One of my stops was at Yahoo Finance. I was there in a blazer, dress slacks and a tie – in the old days, I would’ve been expected to wear a business suit – and everyone in the office was in hoodies and sketchers. I felt like Grandpa Jones chaperoning a high school prom. Went over to Good Housekeeping, where I still had a column for 20 years and learned that my editor was getting canned by the new editor in chief (a year later, the new editor in chief got canned).

Like you running this site, I had a reputation. I could probably have kept going but in my gut, I knew that the gig was literally up. And, what had made it fun for 26 years was the relationships I’d built with really great editors who were calling it quits. I wrote one feature in 2013 for a close friend who was the editor in chief of Prevention, and then hung it up. It was one of the last articles she edited before she got fired.

A part of my career had always been devoted to business writing, and by sheer coincidence, I was offered a very nice position with a publisher of business magazines and took it.

I still get all of the women’s magazines. When I look at the mast heads, I don’t recognize a single name at any of the magazine I called home for almost three decades. I read the articles, and I no longer see a place for the kind of work that I was really good at. Meanwhile, at the age of 60, I’m doing some of the best and most satisfying work of my career and making as much, or more, money as I ever made. Walking away was the best decision I’ve ever made.

So …. walk away. Go fishin’.

I like the idea of you having a group of approved writers and allowing them to post (you should need to approve before it goes up though), and maybe you can pop in to say hello once in a while.

I for one will be gone if this turns into another LIB type thing. That is just a headline site, with little thought or research put into it and is essentially useless.

Thank you for your service to the adult film industry over the years. I am sure it is much appreciated by many.

Learn from what happened with LIB.