Playboy (PLA) tends to be associated with the magazine and sex. Not the hardcore, nasty kind, of course -- Playboy has always been more than a tad distinguished, staying above board while the adult entertainment industry has chosen to compete in ways that my editor would delete if I even attempted.

With Iconix said to be interested in acquiring Playboy, it needs to think about where it can win with the ailing brand. The smart move may be to ditch the magazine and move away from sex -- it can't compete in either of these markets. Then, it needs to figure out how to make the brand relevant to everyone not in the Boomer generation ... or treat Playboy as an investment with a clock on it.

The broader economy is showing signs that we can at least interpret as positive, but this doesn't extend to the media industry, it seems. Condé Nast's ad page results are out for its 2009 issues, now that the last issue of the year has been sold for each of them ... and the situation is grim.

Condé Nast lost 8,359 ad pages this year, according to a report released on Wednesday. Ad pages have plunged 30% this year. Cost cutting has been used to offset the revenue declines, with more than 450 positions removed this year and several magazines shuttered, including Gourmet and Modern Bride.

Vibe, the urban music magazine, is clawing its way back to life. New owners and editors are trying to make the magazine a success reality again, and they are making the web a priority ... which shouldn't be news but is for an ailing print industry.

The new editor-in-chief, Jermaine Hall, told AdAge that "Vibe.com is really the hub," and that everything needs to point back to the online presence. The print publication will be just one part of the Vibe Lifestyle Network, a move we're also seeing with the likes of Rolling Stone, where the website is being brought back into the fold (and may actually get some resources).

The mayhem in the media industry continues. The Wall Street Journal, a News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS) property, is closing its Boston bureau and sending nine employees into the wind. The newswire and MarketWatch operations are going to stay open in Boston, however, with no headcount impact.

The Journal doesn't have any plans to close other offices, according to a memo by managing editor Robert Thomson: "there are no plans, nascent or otherwise, to close any other U.S. or international bureau." The WSJ will still support an "investigative function" in Boston, but the New York-based Money and Investing team will cover Boston's mutual fund industry, which boasts such heavy hitters as Fidelity.

At the same time, magazine company Time Inc., owned by Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) is looking to cut $100 million in expenses, and layoffs will undoubtedly figure into the equation. The company that owns Time, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated – and falls under the same umbrella as AOL, which owns BloggingStocks – is feeling the squeeze of a media recession that's even worse than the regular recession we've all been battling for what feels like decades.

Printers of the world unite! Feeling the squeeze from the likes of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), a group of magazine publishers is forming an industrywide joint venture ... for protection.

Led by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), participating companies would create a digital storefront for their content. In this way, they could peddle their goods without the hefty carve-outs that come with Amazon and Apple deals.

With persistent rumors about top newspapers shifting toward nonprofit models, the "beg your readers for cash" plan is working for at least one smaller outlet.

A week ago, Paste, a music magazine, began asking its readers for donations. The Associated Press reports that "Editor-in-chief Josh Jackson said Thursday the suburban Atlanta-based monthly has raised $166,000 in donations. The magazine focusing on music, film and culture is struggling after a sharp decline in advertising revenue."

In an interview with Media Life, Jackson explained that the magazine has been able to drum up support by offering exclusive bonus tracks donated by artists like the Indigo Girls, Robyn Hitchcock, and The Decemberists.

Playboy (NYSE: PLA) published its Q1 results today. Any longtime follower of the company will note that things haven't changed. We're still talking about revenue declines and losses. When will the Bunny finally hop back into reliable profitability? No one really knows when (if) that will happen.

On a reported basis, Playboy said it lost $0.41 per share. If you strip out charges, you get a loss of $0.15 per share. This number was a few cents better than the expectations of analysts according to this source. Be that as it may, they certainly don't meet my expectations. The adjusted loss is essentially the same as last year's number. I suppose we have to give the interim CEO Jerome Kern a chance. As you'll recall, Christie Hefner finally gave up her throne earlier in the year (thankfully).

Ad pages have been falling throughout the magazine publishing industry, and titles have been shut down at a breakneck pace this year, with newspapers not far behind. Some titles seem immune to the problem; or, at the very least, the lesser of many evilly-immense decreases. Scientific American, as a unit of book publishing juggernaut Macmillan, was one of those at only an 18.1% ad page decline in 2009's first quarter. And the title, 164 years old, has weathered many storms in the industry; it's as solid as an oak.

Yesterday, news of a reorganization had industry onlookers worried that a few employees would be let go. By the end of the day, media watchers were shocked as Editor-in-Chief John Rennie, who's held that role for 15 years, and at least 20 other employees were laid off.

Yesterday, I blogged about the catastrophic decline in advertising in the nation's newspapers and now Publisher's Information Bureau reports that the magazine industry is facing a similarly bleak situation. It's not surprising given that the key drivers behind declines -- a shift toward the internet by readers and weak consumer spending leading companies to cut back on overall ad spending -- are the same.

For the first quarter, magazine ad pages were down 25.9% over the prior year quarter. U.S. News & World Report, plunged almost 69% and Wired was down 57.2%. Boating, Sporting News, Boating Life, Sport Fishing, Power & Motoryacht, and Power Cruising were all down over 50%.

With circulation declining in large part due to the huge amount of free content available on the internet, some magazine publishers are adopting what seems like a counter-intuitive approach to competing: raising prices.

Magazines like Time, Newsweek, Business Week and even the upmarket New Yorker have long relied on low subscription prices to attract large numbers of subscribers, which in turn attracts advertisers. But the New York Times reports that The Economist has raised its price substantially of late and is still continuing to buck the trend of declining circulation. That has other publishers taking notice, and many are planning to increase their subscription and newsstand rates, after years of falling prices.

Time Inc. is planning the launch of an experimental customizable magazine called "mine."

The Associated Press reports that "The magazine is free, but the print edition is limited to the first 31,000 respondents, while an online version is available for another 200,000." Here's how it works: You pick five titles from a list of Time, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Money, In Style, Golf, and Travel + Leisure. Then "mine" editors decide which stories from each will make it into your customized magazine.

With so many magazines folding, this might seem like a strange time to go ahead and start three new ones.

Especially when you have an enormous debt load that is rated as junk by Standard & Poor's and Moody's. But Reader's Digest is launching three new magazines. Back in January I wrote about the launch of Pastor Rick Warren's new magazine, and now Reader's Digest is adding another two to the line-up.

Fresh Home debuted on Monday with 300,000 copies and a focus on lower-end decorating ideas for women and families. The idea is apparently that Ikea-based decorating ideas will be more recession-friendly than Veranda but in truth there hasn't been a shortage of budget decorating magazines in a long time. Add in the recent collapses of Country Home and Domino and it's hard to see any good omens for this one. Best You is a health magazine and will debut next month.

Conde Nast is ditching Domino, the "style magazine that focuses on life at home." The magazine was launched in April of 2005, and CEO Charles H. Townsend said that the decision to abandon the projects was driven "entirely" by the economy.

The magazine's editor told The New York Times that "We tried to create a marriage between the beautiful image magazines and the useful service magazines. Editorially, we did what we set out to do, and in this economy, sadly, that's not enough."

The magazine was burning cash as its ad revenue declined with the housing industry.

Magazine publishers have believed that consumers and advertisers view them as very different from the daily newspaper. The paper is only read by the consumer for an hour, or maybe less. At the end of the day, it is gone. People will take an issue of Newsweek or Good Housekeeping around for days or even months. They may pick it up and read in several times.

Magazines have a longer "shelf life" than newspapers. That should make them more attractive to advertisers.

Some newspaper companies are actually going out of business. Others. like The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) are facing the need to sell assets. The industry has crumbled in just a couple of years as information consumption has moved to the internet.

Early advertising results from this year show that magazines may be the next newspapers and that by 2010 some of them and the companies which own them may be in very deep trouble.

Oh, Playboy (NYSE: PLA)! The news just keeps getting worse. I was checking out the stock quote this morning and saw that the sexy company's shares (by "sexy company" I refer to the fact that Playboy makes its money off naked women, I do not mean to imply that this is an awesome growth situation, as if you needed to be reminded, right?) are down to $1.75. Can that be right? I'm afraid it is. I then had to check the news to see what awful catalyst reared its ugly head this time. I found one that was posted earlier in the week at paidcontent.org. It looks like Playboy is going to be riddled with charges in the third quarter and will be ditching 80 jobs. It'll generate a net loss in Q3. And one final thing: it's getting out of the DVD business.

Say what? Are you kidding? The article also displayed a memo from CEO Christie Hefner. She basically tries to spin the exit from the DVD business as some sort of smart strategic move. Heck, it looks to me more like a move that she had no choice but to make to save money. I understand her thoughts about shifting to digital distribution, but come on, if the company can't make it in the home-video arena, then there's something really, really wrong with the business. The brand's power is being destroyed by all the competitive forces in the adult space. X-rated content is everywhere on the internet, amateurs can start up their own websites pretty easily, and clips can be posted and accessed on YouTube at a moment's notice. These are trying times for Playboy, and the CEO needs to realize that aggressive action must be taken to improve the brand equity of the Bunny.