Playgirl’s Uphill Battle

The New York Times has a two-page feature article about the demise of Playgirl magazine. It features interviews with the three women who edited the mag and gives fairly frank details about what went wrong:

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So she and her fellow editors, all women in their 20s and all relative neophytes to the world of magazines — and pornography — resolved to fill Playgirl with something different. They aspired to bring Playgirl back to its roots, back to a time when the magazine covered issues like abortion and equal rights, interspersing sexy shots of men with work from writers like Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates.

All the while, the editors juggled the demands of the publisher, Blue Horizon Media, which they said pushed to fill Playgirl with even more nudes and fewer words.

“It always felt like this uphill battle,” said Jessanne Collins, 29, who was Playgirl’s senior editor.

Apparently the people who ran the magazine have nothing to do with the Playgirl site – a pity.

By the way, the timeline showing a progressively blase attitude to naked men after three weeks… Make it eight years and that’s where I’m at; paying more attention to lighting and contrast than cock size. Sigh.