Features

Bay Guardian cans its longtime sex columnist

The Associated Press
Friday December 21, 2001

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After 17 years of dispensing advice on everything from positions to prowess, sex columnist Isadora Alman has been dumped by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, an alternative weekly newspaper. 

Bay Guardian editor Bruce B. Brugmann cited tough financial times for axing the “Ask Isadora” column, a fixture in the paper since 1984. 

“We offered her several different options, various ways she could continue on,” Brugmann said. “She wanted to stay our highest-paid writer. There wasn’t any way to come to terms right now under the circumstances.” 

Alman was a volunteer with San Francisco Sex Information, a nonprofit sex advice service, when she began penning her column for the Bay Guardian in 1984. What began as once-monthly sex advice grew into a weekly column syndicated to 12 newspapers across the country. 

Despite Alman’s expertise in relationships, sexual and otherwise, she remains stung by the way her business relationship with Brugmann ended. 

“I had never gotten a note from Bruce. I must say that rankles,” Alman said. “I had been more than kind to the Guardian for 18 years, and I never got a ’sorry’ or a wave from Bruce.”