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An excerpt from writer, critic and long-time industry observer Gram Ponante’s deep-dive into the recent bloodbath at AVN

“It was like a bucket of cold water,” says Dan Miller, Editor-in-Chief of AVN Magazine which, since 1983, has been the publication of record in the adult industry. He is calling to tell me that the freelance budget has been cut entirely and I will be let go. It’s awful news and he is sorry to give it. More than 20 people from across the company got similar news. The editorial staff, which once numbered in the dozens and easily employed double-digits full time, has been reduced to two: Miller and Peter Warren, both of whom have been with the publication for almost two decades.

There was a similar round of layoffs in April of 2020 when Managing Editor Sharan Street and Novelties editor Sherri Shaulis were laid off. With the departure of these two full-timers, AVN’s in-house editorial division consisted of two middle-aged men. Today, since Portland-based fetish and BDSM authority Theresa “Darklady” Reed was laid off, as well as regular contributor Anka Radakovich, there are no female writers at the porn trade publication. . . .

Adult Video News was founded as the newsletter of a Philadelphia porno store in 1983 by Paul Fishbein, who is now an independent producer of documentary films. Fishbein took AVN west in the 1990s and presided over a rip-roaring company that was at once a trade publication for the adult industry, an advertising-fueled news outlet (I was hired in 2002 as the editor of AVN.com and was fired after I wrote something inconvenient about major advertiser Digital Playground, then freelanced off and on until this morning), and an awards arbiter. There were a lot of masters to serve; it was like if Variety hosted the Oscars.

Gram Ponante is “America’s Beloved Porn Journalist™,” and his site is an essential destination for those seeking the straight scoop on the adult industry.

‘I’ve always been an adrenaline junkie and sex has always been my primary hobby’

By Gram Ponante for AVN Magazine

Photography by Michael Whiteacre / HoneyHouse PR

LOS ANGELES—At first glance, Jamie Jett might look like a sage-smudging, long-skirted Sausalito massage therapist, or maybe a San Diego surfer girl, but she’s really an orgy-throwing goth/punk who likes fucking on pool tables. Sometimes it’s difficult to get that across to people.

“It’s easier when I’ve got the 10-inch heels and blue hair,” she says, “but yes, it’s sometimes a struggle to look as decadent as I feel.”

Jett, whose nom de porn is a tribute to “Bad Reputation” icon Joan Jett, and who hopes desperately that her hero will one day find out there’s a blonde pornstress fucking in her name, grew up in the Bay Area and, on the day of our interview, completed her final test to earn her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

“The day I completed my degree is ten times more exciting than I ever imagined it,” she says. “I finished my last test two days after a 10-person orgy.”

In that extra-liberal world that is the Bay Area, Jett was (and is) especially wild, but she maintained excellent grades, even while sneaking away from home on public transportation to ride into San Francisco and attend play parties at bondage clubs. Her double life occasionally overlapped perilously, like that Christmas in the choir loft.

“My partner and I had been rehearsing flute duets for about two months, and the tension was growing,” she says, revealing yet again the tawdry side of the woodwinds section. “My first sexual experience was on a pew in a balcony above a congregation of 200 people on Christmas Eve. I still have a Pavlovian response to certain Christmas songs.

“And we got caught. But not in the balcony. Later we were just making out in a closet, and that’s when we got caught. And his parents? They sent him to Spain.”