When Jim Buckmaster lashed out at the attorneys general that Craigslist was not the worst offender in the publication of erotic ads, he wasn’t kidding. After Craigslist announced it was shifting its erotic category to a moderated adult section, sales of erotic ads have soared – at local alternative weekly newspapers, according to the Washington City Paper.

The paper reports sales of adult ads were up 38 percent in the first week of May, compared to the same time last year. In Minneapolis, the alternative City Pages says its adult ad sales have almost doubled. And the SF Weekly in San Francisco, Craigslist’s home base, saw an increase from 160 adult ads the week before Craigslist’s policy went into affect to 910 last week.

The shift away from Craigslist is not without a price. An adult-services ad in the Washington City Paper starts at $150 per week. The Chicago Reader charges $100. Craigslist, by contrast, charges only $10 for ads placed in its new adult category (it used to be $5 pre-vetting).

This article in Washington’s City Paper goes into more details on what can and can’t be posted in the alt-weeklies’ erotic sections (warning: NSFW).

On a related note, Craigslist was back in the news this week with police in North Carolina hunting for a man believed to have been hired by a husband to rape his wife. The husband found the rapist on Craigslist.