Playboy magazine will stop producing a print version | Hacker News Reader

Playboy magazine will stop producing a print version

medium.com

93 pointshaunter25 comments

Here's an story that is semi-related to this. I visited the Playboy Mansion about five years ago for an event, and it was easily the strangest, most surreal residence I've ever seen. Nothing about it at all symbolized class or any kind of sexiness; it was simply run-down, unkempt, and almost comically dated in basically every way. Not to mention the weirdness of having things like a personal zoo on the grounds.

Over the course of the event, two incredibly odd things happened that I'll never forget: first, every twenty minutes, a new literal busload of scantily-clad women showed up until the ratio was easily 10:1 to their favor; and two, about halfway through the night, Hef walked out on his balcony, waved to us, and then went back inside without saying a word.

It was fun for a bucket list-type thing, but man, it really popped the balloon of whatever fantastical idea I had about the Playboy Mansion and what it symbolized. Instead it was just old and tired, which is probably a metaphor for the brand and it's patriarch.

I’m not surprised ... happens to everything in the end.

To be fair, 5 years ago (2015) Hef was 89 years old. Can't really expect his house to be in tip-top physical shape, he probably rarely left his bedroom. It was probably pretty cool back in the 70's.

I wouldn't expect a man of his age and wealth to do the house chores himself... although I suppose the ability to effectively managing his employees might go out the window too.

Title ("Playboy magazine is closing down") is misleading. They are stopping the print version of the magazine, not digital.

> With all of this in mind, we have decided that our Spring 2020 Issue, which arrives on U.S. newsstands and as a digital download this week, will be our final printed publication for the year in the U.S. We will move to a digital-first publishing schedule for all of our content including the Playboy Interview, 20Q, the Playboy Advisor and of course our Playmate pictorials. In 2021, alongside our digital content offerings and new consumer product launches, we will bring back fresh and innovative printed offerings in a variety of new forms–through special editions, partnerships with the most provocative creators, timely collections and much more. Print is how we began and print will always be a part of who we are.

so is your own comment: "They are stopping the print version"

> bring back fresh and innovative printed offerings

> print will always be a part of who we are

"The print version" in the parent comment is clearly referring to the flagship magazine, which is indeed what they are shutting down.

They're saying they may still produce printed products that aren't the magazine. Which may be true, but the magazine is what most people think of when they hear the name "Playboy."

I disagree with your comment and stand by my own.

I think the problem here is that they're vague about what the story is. I read the paragraph more times than it deserves, and all that's clear is that they won't print a magazine this year after their Spring issue, plus maybe they will or won't do various things in the future. Given the vagueness, it's not surprising that you and kranner interpreted it differently.

I've changed the title to say "stop producing a print version" since they're at least going to stop for now, whether or not they start again.

“Playboy magazine is closing down”

Oh FAP ..

> They are stopping the print version of the magazine, not digital.

Have you any idea just how difficult it is to get dried-in yogurt out of an iPad screen.

Please don't do this here.

Wow, there's a press release that's so desperately spinning so many claims of so many kinds (social, business, health, educational, tech, ethical...) that it's almost impossible for me to figure out what they are even announcing. I didn't expect I would care, whatever they did, but I thought it might be some sort of "end of an era" historical thing. I didn't expect an announcement hidden so deep in the poo that I'm not sure I ever found it.

Playboy has been lost in a fog of mismanagement for something like forty years now, so incompetence at even basic tasks like writing a press release is not terribly surprising.

What's perhaps more interesting to me is that a company that historically is a publisher, with aspirations of becoming a primarily digital publisher, needs "Medium" as a platform to get their message out.

It's not necessarily dumb (I wonder how many of their properties are blocked by corporate content filters), but fascinating that they don't have a "corporate channel" with which to communicate this.

Most adult companies have a clean brandname that actually does thing like rent office space, pay checks, or put out company blogs.

Playboy on the other hand always took the stance of erotica being nothing to be ashamed about, and was a key fighter for free speech during its early days.

That era sadly, seems to be over.

Totally agree with your assessment.

As far as I can tell, the announcement is: the print version of Playboy Magazine is being indefinitely discontinued. The Playboy brand may decide to come out with some other printed materials sometime in 2021 or later.

I bought an online issue of a magazine recently for $5.99. I can only view it while online, or using their special app.

Essentially, no thanks.

This is the situation with Kindle books as well.

Although the Kindle app does work when offline, I can't change the font and what is most important to me: the line-height. Also the macOS Kindle app doesn't render Devanagari fonts correctly (I'm guessing out-of-date WebKit), so it is essential to be able to use a third-party viewer if I want to read Hindi Kindle books on my 4K monitor. Also I'd like to keep them in my Calibre library along with the rest of my digital books so I can use my existing categories.

The only solution so far is to remove the DRM. Unfortunately it (probably) violates the terms of use.

I only buy DRM stuff for throwaway items. Anything I want to keep, I'll only buy a pdf or hardcopy. I seriously doubt any app to read a magazine offline is going to work in 70 years, while I still have magazines my father saved from 70 years ago, and my grandmother's Nat Geo collection from the 1920's.

Don't count on PDF being enough. That monstrosity of a format can now contain JavaScript and elements that phone home / authorize a render / download decryption keys etc...

Ugh.

It's had that for at least 7 years. I had the misfortune of having to implement a form with that way back when.

PDF is a horrible set of standards. Abandon hope all ye who have to dive into that spec.

This title is so misleading!

The magazine isn't closing down. They're just not doing print editions anymore, like many other magazines and newspapers.

well we'll always have a digital copy of Lena somewhere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Tragic, yet inevitable?

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