ESPN The Magazine: Aims To Increase Newsstand Through Nude Pictures

In this very challenging climate for the magazine industry, editors will go to almost any length to increase newsstand sales (and/or media attention) for its title. Case in point: ESPN the Magazine‘s will announce today plans for their premiere “Body Issue” featuring more than 30 male and female athletes posing nude or semi-nude, raising eyebrows about the “naked” play for sales.

Writing for Folio, Vanessa Voltolina reports:

ESPN The Magazine’s first “Body Issue” will hit newsstands on October 9, featuring more than 30 male and female athletes posing nude or semi-nude. Already, it’s raised some eyebrows—enough, in fact, that the magazine decided to host a media conference call this afternoon.

On hand during the call were editor-in-chief Gary Belsky, editorial director and general manger Gary Hoenig, executive editor Sue Hovey, as well as USA Softball’s Jessica Mendoza, one of the issue’s athlete-models. The editors said the issue was meant as a “photographic and journalistically-driven” exploration of the athletic form. (This issue’s six covers, featuring a different athlete on each, will be kept under wraps until next week, the company said.)

Content, they said, will include an essay about how athletes use sex and physicality to sell themselves, an article focused on the creation of realistic video game avatars (with vendor EA and athlete Kobe Bryant) and a story based on the staff’s participation in an ACL repair surgery. And, of course, plenty of male and female athletes baring it all.

“Photographic and journalistically-driven”? Isn’t that sort of like saying that one reads Playboy for the articles?

In truth ESPN the Magazine‘s chief competitor Sports Illustrated annually earns a lot of ad dollars (and publicity) with their soft-porn “Swimsuit issue,” so its hard to blame anybody for trying to stay competitive – particularly in this ad recession. And it must be noted that ESPN the Magazine Art Direction is always top-shelf, so its difficult to see this sort of feature as distasteful or inappropriate.

That said – desperate times call for for desperate measures. And if the folks behind the magazine wanted attention, so far its proved to be a success.