News Flash!

The Blitz Weekly will be putting together an exclusive all-nude issue featuring male and female staff writers writing and editing articles in the buff!

Consider it an, ahem, early Christmas treat!

Fat chance. You know they’re way too modest for such antics.

That was just a big tease for those of you who seldom, if ever, pick up a copy of The Blitz Weekly.

True confession time: No, The Blitz Weekly will never be able to compete with Playboy or the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. That’s just not their game.

But the reality is this: Sex sells. We know that.

Such is the prevailing attitude magazine publishers, and in some cases, newspaper editors have in a print industry hard hit by the recession. Publications are so desperate to win over readers that their concern is not in providing content, but offering up slices of female cheesecake as an attempt to get readers to buy something they’d normally wouldn’t.

If you buy into the reason the New York Post published photos of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews nude in her hotel bedroom --- because ESPN actually outed her as the one seen in the infamous internet video taken by the peephole pervert last August -- you’re nothing more than a born sucker.

The New York Post did it to sell newspapers, plain and simple.

As a kid growing up in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, I don’t recall seeing as many periodicals flaunting nudity, such as celebrities sporting nothing more than a tie or scant bikini, the way they do today. Maybe I just didn’t pay close enough attention to what was actually sitting on the magazine racks?

I always thought nudity was relegated only to behind-the-counter pornography magazines, all of which came wrapped in sealed plastic bags.

Not so anymore. On Oct. 9, ESPN magazine, which is published by Disney, unveiled their first ever “Body Issue” featuring various male and female athletes in either the nude or semi-nude poses.

I guess Mickey Mouse has no problem showing supposedly tasteful photos of martial artist Gina Carano, tennis star Serena Williams or major league baseball’s Ivan Rodriguez in the buff. How ironic. They embrace nudity, and yet they won’t release ABC’s The Path to 9/11 out of fear the film will ruin former President Clinton’s legacy as the man who contends he tried to kill Osama bin Laden during his eight years in office.

I have nothing against magazines publishing nude photos of celebrities with either little or nothing on so long as the publication or article that is printed has something to do with the images.

There is a reason why Shape magazine has a front cover picture of former Seinfeld star Julia Louis Dreyfus showing off her trimmed abs posing in a bikini. The picture is not just to show off how good-looking she is at 48. Somewhere in that issue is an article explaining how she got herself to look that way.

That does not however explain the reason why actress Jennifer Aniston was on the front cover of GQ magazine wearing only a tie? What does she have to do with a gentleman’s fashion magazine? I have to wonder about the decision some actresses make when it comes losing the robe for the cameras. The minute Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner offers a top Hollywood actress like Aniston, Lindsay Lohan, or singer Britney Spears to pose nude for half a million, they say no. Yet when some non-pornographic magazine comes calling asking them to lose the clothes for an upcoming issue, they say yes.

I have to laugh at how bookstores today try to make various publications inaccessible to the kiddies by putting them on the top shelves of magazine racks. Just because 8-year-old Junior can’t quite reach the top rack for a closer look at the front cover of Out magazine that caters to the gay/lesbian community showing singer Lady Gaga with nothing on doesn’t mean the kid’s blind.

I might as well start calling Allure magazine “Playboy Lite” judging from the nude spreads I saw of comedienne Chelsey Handler, actress Eliza Dusku, and TV chef Padma Lakshmi in their April 21 issue which was promoted by the entertainment media.

The answers they gave in Allure are the pornographic equivalent of what centerfolds in Playboy or Maxim say.

“My boobs are good,” said Chelsea Handler when asked what body parts she is most proud of. “They’re real and perky. Even if you can’t see them, the important thing is that I know about them, and the guys I’ve slept with know about them.”

"I tend to sleep in the nude,” said Padma Lakshmi. “I'm an innately tactile person and a very sensual-leaning woman. You have to use the word 'leaning' or it sounds like I'm boasting! When I'm in my own private space, I do spend time with very little on."

Seeing them in the buff covering up their breasts and private parts, I have to ask, why don’t they just let it all hang out for Playboy? These pictures are nothing more than their way of saying, “Look at me loser. Sit there and dream about what you not only wish you could have but will never ever look like no matter how much you exercise and diet.”

The stuff readers are being given today is not journalism. Writers and photographers are not working in the journalism profession. They are engaging in publishing soft-core pornography.

In today’s print industry, too many editors and publishers are pimps; the female celebrities they get to strip down are the prostitutes, and the readers are the johns, who shell out their hard-earned money to look at something they’d normally never buy, much less read.

I don’t happen to be one of those people. Are you?