As featured in today’s New York Times, The Source, hip-hop’s longest running magazine which last year celebrated its 20th anniversary, has decided to take a stand and stop running ads for lewd products in its pages.
Despite the fact that it’s a harsh time in the publishing industry, and that such ads have often been more than half the pages in the magazine, the publisher Londell McMillan said he wont run any more “booty ads,” pornographic websites or escort services. The Hip-Hop industry has long been targeted by the media and activist groups for its misogynist lyrics and images of scantily clad women in its videos, album covers and magazines.
Londell McMillan, Publisher of The Source, states, “It’s time the Hip-Hop industry stop advertising junk and be more responsible about what we sell to our readers. The Source has been much more selective about what we put in our magazine and created higher standards since we’ve changed ownership. We owe it to our readers and the parents who don’t want their children reading about the latest porn sites and seeing booty ads in the back of the magazine.”
“While we realize we are taking a major risk, we want to gain larger more corporate mainstream advertising, and believe we can. There’s a lot of major corporations that want hip-hop but don’t want the filth that goes along with it.”
McMillan is also a partner at a major law firm in NYC, Dewey & Lebouef.
