Lecture: Christopher Napolitano
Christopher Napolitano conveys the Playboy ethos.
Photo: Megan Thompson.
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Playboy Editorial Director Christopher Napolitano knows how to warm up a crowd. After walking into the atrium of NYU’s Department of Journalism on March 7, Napolitano, stylishly turned out in a dark pinstripe suit, accented by a lavender tie and violet pocket square, launched into a disarming speech. “This is going to be a very loose-limbed presentation,” he said, “There’s going to be a lot of snake oil involved, a sales pitch, and, hopefully, something that has to do with putting out a magazine.” His winning blend of self-deprecating humor and unabashed hype caused the audience to burst out laughing.
Napolitano, 42, applied for his first job at Playboy on a whim in 1988. “You’re going to be asked three things,” he advised students preparing to enter the work force. “What books do you read? What magazines do you read? What authors do you like?” Once you have that format down, Napolitano said, you can ace the interview.
Mastering this formula paid off for Napolitano. Former Playboy Fiction Editor Alice Turner hired him as an editorial assistant in the magazine’s fiction department. Napolitano was charged with sifting through the unsolicited fiction submissions that deluged the magazine. Occasionally, he found diamonds in the rough, some of which the magazine published. Before long, he began writing small pieces for the magazine, such as product profiles and front-of-the-book vignettes. Over the next 16 years, he steadily worked his way up the masthead to become editorial director.
Napolitano has a lot of respect for Playboy’s history. He attributes the magazine’s continuing success to founder Hugh Hefner. “The formula Hugh Hefner stumbled upon 50 years ago … hasn’t changed that much,” Napolitano told his largely female audience. “At its core, [Playboy’s] still the same.” Grabbing an issue of the magazine, he flipped to the “Playboy Interview” section. Napolitano spoke of former contributor Alex Haley, whose interviews with cultural luminaries like Miles Davis (1962) and Malcolm X (1963), helped cement the magazine’s reputation.
Playboy also has a history of publishing prize-winning fiction, Napolitano said. This tradition continues today. “We are one of the few magazines, at this point, that publishes short stories,” he said, displaying the opening pages of a story by Norman Mailer to the crowd.
Photo: Megan Thompson.
Strictly speaking, Playboy is not pornography, according to Napolitano. It is a general interest magazine for men. “What do men think about? Women and sex,” he said. The magazine’s mission is two-fold: Fulfill men’s fantasies about beautiful women “who like sex,” and inform them about the issues affecting society today.
Because of the magazine’s “general interest” format, its features are stylistically diverse, said Napolitano. “We have a place for a wide range of reporting,” he said, “everything from fashion to the serious stuff.” But, he warned, Playboy isn’t “the easiest place to crack.” The magazine has a lot of clout in the industry, which means it can afford to be very selective, he noted.
Although Playboy reaches a broad spectrum of readers, the magazine targets men in their 30s, said Napolitano. Because its readership skews young, it generally depicts a “lifestyle that involves a lot of play,” according to Napolitano. Playboy’s goal is to give its readers “social ammunition”—in other words, an education in the importance of status symbols. “Hand-held devices, Lamborghinis, private yachts, private jets-these are the kinds of things we showcase,” Napolitano said.
Playboy’s iconic status is a double-edged sword in a magazine market that prizes the young, the brash, the out-of-the-box. Napolitano has watched the circulation of “lad-culture” magazines, like Maxim and Stuff, climb in recent years. But he insists that the rapidly rising sales of competing publications actually benefit Playboy. “Maxim and FHM (For Him Magazine) are good things for Playboy,” he said. “When … their newsstand numbers go up, our newsstand numbers go up.” Magazines like Maxim have made “girl watching OK,” Napolitano explained, introducing general-interest men’s magazines to “a whole new market,” comprised of the 18-25 demographic.
So what sets Playboy apart from the pack? “We’re classy,” said Napolitano. Playboy is a magazine with an agenda, he continued. We give our audience what they want to read, but we also provide them with material we believe they should read, he said. Quoting Hugh Hefner, Napolitano said, “The girls are the carnival barkers outside the circus tent … They’re saying, ‘dancing girls are inside.’ Then when the audience walks through the door, we give them the preacher.”