“I know it when I see it.” Those words, uttered by Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 as he attempted to define obscenity, have informed battles over pornography for much of the last half-century. At the red-hot center of that debate is a Chicago company that piques universal interest, and it’s the focus of this week’s cover story, “Adventures in the skin trade.”
For a guide through the swamp of colorful characters and complex finances at Playboy Enterprises, one could not have a better guide than senior correspondent Greg Burns, who discovered that under the superficial gloss, Playboy is a complicated creature. A former business editor at the Tribune who recently profiled real estate mogul Samuel Zell for the Magazine, Burns decided early on to follow the money-and it led him in astonishing, one might say eye-popping, directions.
“The company is so open, the people there so charming, the magazine so much the way I remember it in college,” explains Greg. “I wouldn’t have guessed they had gotten into such explicit stuff.”
Greg worked on the story for months, but he remembers a particular moment of clarity: An invitation arrived to attend the porn industry’s annual awards ceremony, where Playboy’s No. 2 executive accepted the porn world’s “Positive Image Award.”
“I knew times had changed,” remarked Greg. “And I knew I had a good story to tell.”
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This week we introduce A NEW CARTOON FEATURE BY HARRY BLISS, whose work includes covers and cartoons for the New Yorker and illustrations for several popular children’s books. Bliss, who is 41 and lives in Vermont with his son, describes his cartoons as “edgy, not your typical newspaper panel cartoon.” See for yourself on Page 4 and every week with the In-Box letters.
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etaylor@tribune.com
