The past few weeks the Straight Dope hasn’t been in the Boston Phoenix - I tried doing a search for Boston Phoenix in the forums but have garnered no results. What gives? It’s probably me… I probably missed some sort of announcement along the way. Or maybe someone’s been removing the page. 
I suspect they had an increase in prostitute^H^H^H “escort” advertising and needed the space.
Sadly, I NEVER lived in a city that had a paper that carried the Dope, excepting a brief one-semester urban studies stint in Chicago during college. Even then, at the time I was in pre-gentrification Bucktown/Wicker Park, and it was next to impossible to find the Reader there.
Buffalo - Artvoice. No Dope.
Denver - Westword. No Dope.
Orlando - Orlando Weekly. No Dope.
Kansas City - Pitch. No Dope.
Cleveland - Scene and Free Times. No Dope.
I’ve looked at their website http://www.bostonphoenix.com/ and can’t find anything. I tried looking through their archives, but they don’t list The Straight Dope on their table of contents even from when they ran it, so that’s no help.
My guess is they quietly dropped it to concentrrate on more home-grown talent.
Don’t make fun of the Escort ads – when I was an undergrad the ads and the personals columns were the best free entertainment you could get all week!
Damn. Can we get any official word on this?