PHOENIX - After an 18-year run, X-Factor is closing its doors at the end of 2007, general manager Tim DePlanche said. DePlanche did not give a reason for the decision.
X-Factor originated in 1988 among a group of seven friends who wanted to publish a gay newsmagazine in Phoenix. That project debuted in September 1989 as Echo magazine. The back pages of Echo, consisting of personals, phone sex ads and gay porn reviews by a freelance writer calling himself Onan the Vulgarian, comprised the "adult section."
Echo's adult content proved to be an obstacle to achieving wider distribution, so the controversial material evolved into a separate pull-out section. When that proved to be unwieldy, the pull-out section became X-Factor.
The first independent X-Factor appeared on Halloween 1994. It featured Adam Hart and Joshua Sterling on the cover in a scene from the John Trennell film Nights In Eden for Studio 2000. The video got an average two-shirt rating from Onan, who in the same issue gave a "scorched shirt" review to Pleasure Productions' Interior Motives.
In 1996, with the growth of the Internet and the decline of phone-sex advertising, Echo co-founder Ken Furtado became editor of X-Factor and set about developing new content in order to attract wider readership. Lefty Mouser was hired to review gay websites and other content was added, including the popular "Whoroscopes," book reviews, sex fitness, "The Naked Traveler" and the annual Hard Choice Awards, Onan's distinctively idiosyncratic gay porn awards.
The magazine's website debuted in 1998.
Over the years, X-Factor won accolades and awards, both in the U.S. and abroad.
"I always wanted X-Factor to give readers something they could not find elsewhere, and my writers and I have succeeded in doing that," Furtado said. "The demand for print copies continues to be greater than the number of magazines available, and online readership is at its all-time high."
Although the print publication no longer will exist, Furtado plans to launch a new version of X-Factor online early in 2008. The new incarnation will have a different URL but will incorporate most of the same columns and writers in addition to new features. Readers can email a request to be put on a one-time-only mailing list to be notified when the new site is launched.
Echo will continue to be published.
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