Lost in the Coronavirus news - Playboy magazine ceasing publication

[OnlinePoker]

Playboy Magazine Is Closing Down, Probably for Good

Playboy has announced that it’s closing down its flagship magazine for the rest of 2020. It seems unlikely, given the wording of the announcement and the state of print magazine-making, that it will ever return. It’s not a surprise, exactly — its circulation and advertising drooped long ago, accelerating as the nudie pictures for which it was celebrated became available everywhere for free. Hugh Marston Hefner, its founder/editor/latter-day reality-show star/loungewear enthusiast, died in 2017, as his faded empire contracted around him, and one got the sense that the magazine was kept going partly because nobody wanted Hef to outlive it.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/playboy-magazine-is-closing-down-probably-for-good.html

[Hoyt]

1. And the articles really weren't that good.

[lastlib]

2. articles?

[Buns_of_Fire]

3. So I've been told. nt

[DFW]

4. I remember being told once that some of their articles were actually interesting

But this was something like 40 years ago, and I never got to read one for myself, so I can't say one way or the other. I wonder what became (or will become?) of that playboy mansion with all sorts of women running around for whatever purpose young attractive women hang around a place like that? Was it sold or disbanded?

Maybe old issues will now become collectors' items, like the first Superman comics of 1939.

[forgotmylogin]

5. They had great in-depth interviews. MLK in 1965.

They weren't *just* about boobies, Playboy also published fiction, culture and political news, and yes sexy pictorials. Playboy was a pretty thick magazine, and the featured photoshoots and the centerfolds (usually 3 per issue) took up maybe 8 double pages each. I worked in periodicals at the bookstore back in the 90s and the Christmas issue especially was huge like the heft of a regular Vogue issue. The spines were flat glue-bound instead of folded if that gives you an idea of the amount of content every month.

https://www.flavorwire.com/412697/10-of-the-most-fascinating-playboy-interviews

If you only read one interview on our list, please make it this one. The civil rights leader sat down for an in-depth talk about the movement. He addresses claims of extremism, and shares poignant stories about his boyhood and the people he encountered along his journey for freedom. A passage about the many threats to his life is absolutely heartbreaking:

“If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn’t function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.”

King concludes the interview with a moving and beautiful statement that is all the more powerful since the anniversary of his “I Have a Dream” speech just passed:

“I subject myself to self-purification and to endless self-analysis; I question and soul-search constantly into myself to be as certain as I can that I am fulfilling the true meaning of my work, that I am maintaining my sense of purpose, that I am holding fast to my ideals, that I am guiding my people in the right direction. But whatever my doubts, however heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in — for all men, black and white alike.”

[DFW]

6. Right. That kind of thing.

A long time ago.

[forgotmylogin]

7. Dick Cheney was interviewed as recently as April 2015.

He's loathsome, but that's the kind of content they were also known for.

They had short fiction by Margaret Atwood, Arthur C. Clarke, etc.