When a punter in football kicks the ball so far and so quickly up the field, he often puts the rest of his teammates at a disadvantage. The opposing return team is then able to set up quicker and the punt returner has a better chance of getting a good return. It is called "out-punting" your coverage. The goal is to kick the ball far, but also high, and keep it in the air as long as possible. Just kicking it far can present a problem.
Well it looks like Hugh Heffner and Playboy have "outpunted" their coverage by mainstreaming sexuality and pornography so much so that it may have hurt their market. Here is an excerpt of a thoughtful reflection on the issue, the cause, and why we don't really have great cause for rejoicing.
The economy is apparently hitting the Playboy pornographic empire, at least according to an article in December in Business Week. The magazine which was famously described as being good for women, providing that women knew what they were good for, is struggling, but before you crack open the champagne, it is no cause for rejoicing those who deplore what it represent: the problem Playboy faces is twofold -- the `softcore' content on which it made its reputation is now so mainstream that equivalent material can be found in many magazines that would never be considered pornographic; and it cannot compete with the harder, more explicit stuff that is now easily available to any ten year old child with a computer and a modem. As one pundit on Tina Brown's politics and culture webpage, The Daily Beast, asked, `Who buys a skin mag these days?'
You can read the rest of the article here. I highly recommend it.
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