Rethinking a Great American Magazine

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 2002 by Greg Lindsay

Byline: Greg Lindsay

You read FOLIO: for the articles, we know, but do you still read Playboy , or even flip through it? Does anyone? Actually, 3.2 million (mostly) men do every month, and have for nearly five decades. Still, by the contemporary benchmark of magazine success - the buzz - Playboy disappeared sometime during the Carter administration (right after he confessed that lust lived in his heart).

During this absence, the lad books Maxim, FHM , and their progeny arrived from the United Kingdom and usurped Playboy 's spot on the bedside tables of young bachelors everywhere. Playboy still had circ, heritage, and its centerfolds on its side, but founder Hugh Hefner's soft-core fantasies were resonating less and less with men who preferred the lad books' frat-boy humor to Playboy's limp cartoons.

So when Playboy and Hef announced in September that they had hired James Kaminsky to drag the mag into the current millennium, the publishing world smirked. Hef was raiding the ranks of his nemesis - he was stealing away the executive editor of Maxim.

Kaminsky inherits the title of editorial director from Arthur Kretchmer, a Playboy employee for 30 years, who will step down after assembling Playboy's 50th-anniversary issue in December 2003. Until then, while the pair works side by side, Kaminsky says he'll get a feel for the traditions and rhythms of the place. Only then will he begin changing the magazine. Everything from the design to the roster of writers will be evaluated and updated, Kaminsky says. Most important - and perhaps most disturbing to many of Playboy's aging hipsters - he'll rethink the way nudity is treated in the book.

This is not the first time that Playboy has flirted with newfangled ideas, but the title's weighty legacy has swallowed previous editors' best attempts. The difference this time, Kretchmer says, is "[other editors] didn't get the mandate that Jim is getting, and they didn't come in with the power that Jim has."

The mandate - to reconnect with today's readers - is a challenge not easily met, Kaminsky says. He can't go the Maxim route; it would dilute grand Hef's vision. To appease his boss, Kaminsky must do nothing short of reinventing - or at least reinterpreting - sexuality, healing a tarnished icon, and amassing a new, younger following. Hef wants the literary status of The New Yorker, but the newsstand sales of People. "I would not be doing my job correctly if [growth] did not happen," says Kaminsky, who began working for Playboy in early October.

In short, he needs some advice, and FOLIO: - along with seemingly everyone else who's ever read Playboy - is happy to give him some. Here, we offer a beginning playbook for Playboy: proposed covers from acclaimed designers; suggestions from a think tank of magazine editors; and proposals (all free of charge!) from a distinguished committee of consultants and media buyers. This is how Playboy can spin, reposition, and begin to recalibrate its business. Sexy stuff.

Any Playboy renaissance will have to begin with the design - an issue that was reiterated by everyone who was contacted for this story. And it's Kaminsky's first stop. He spent his inaugural week on the job holed up in meetings with art director Tom Staebler and photography director Gary Cole.

The magazine's current look and feel (created long before the Macintosh ushered in clean, uniform design) ages and dulls the content. The vernacular is way too scattershot, way too past tense. Readers don't trust Playboy to tell them something new because the magazine design looks so old.

The design has to go, and Kretchmer (and by extension, Hefner) is OK with it. "Illustrations that don't work can take something very contemporary and make it look as though it has been around for 15 years," Kaminsky says. "That has been a problem for Playboy. The magazine gets in its own way with the jumps. Playboy needs to become a cover-to-cover read. I think it's going to have a fast look."

The makeover Kaminsky has in mind is akin to the redesign Ed Needham (an alum of another lad title, FHM) is administering at Rolling Stone. "I'd like to see a cleaner approach," Kaminsky says, "yet busy up some of the pages, but not every page. Rolling Stone has done it in a too frenetic way." Kaminsky wants tons of sidebars, cutlines, and multiple points-of-entry - all of which define post-lad design.

Kaminsky is still coy about how the title's content needs to be invigorated. He and Kretchmer say the magazine will get smarter and hipper, but they're not saying how. They are, they say, looking to tune in to pop culture. And that, says Kretchmer, is why, after three decades in the trenches, he is leaving: "Let me put it this way: At this point in my life, I don't care who Weezer is. And that's not fair to Weezer, that's not fair to Playboy magazine." Kaminsky, however, is Weezer wise, and could probably tick off the names of the band's CDs.

And now for the big question: Will Kaminsky clothe the centerfold? Despite Hef's recent ruminations on dialing back the sex (in the magazine, not in the mansion), Kaminsky says the Playmates will continue to bear all. Hef's musings, it seems, stem more from a desire to start a buzz around a revamped magazine than mixing it up with the barely-there girls in Maxim. "Pictures of beautiful women are very important," Kaminsky says. And Kretchmer agrees. "When the nudity comes out of Playboy, it will die."