Soon "I read it for the articles" will be more believable. 
 
 The iconic men's magazine Playboy says it is planning to drop fully nude female photography from its pages. 
 
 In a letter to readers, the magazine predicted that everyone would be asking why, so it answered, "Playboy has been a friend to nudity, and nudity has been a friend to Playboy, for decades. The short answer is: times change." 
 
 Like so many other magazines, Playboy is reacting to the Internet revolution. In Playboy's case, it is about the ubiquity of online pornography. 
 
 "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. It's just passé at this juncture," Playboy's chief executive Scott Flanders told The New York Times, which first reported the news on Monday night. 
 
 His comments sent shock waves through the magazine industry. Playboy, founded by Hugh Hefner, has been a controversial part of American popular culture since its debut in 1953. 
 
 "Yes, we're taking a risk by going non-nude," the magazine said, "but this is a company—like all great companies—that has risk in its DNA." 
 
 Playboy has a circulation of around 800,000 -- way down from its pre-Internet glory days when it boasted a circulation of many millions. 
 
 Related: Why is Playboy giving up nudity? 
 
 By covering up the nude photos, the magazine hopes to appeal to a broader and younger audience both in print and online. 
 
 The change will take effect in February when Playboy publishes its March issue. 
 
 But the magazine will continue to show women in what it calls provocative poses -- like Maxim, Esquire, GQ and other publications. 
 
 Another competitor is Vice, an outlet that began as a print magazine and has evolved into a multimedia juggernaut valued at more than $2 billion. Both Playboy and Vice target young men living in urban areas. "The difference between us and Vice," Flanders told the Times, "is that we're going after the guy with a job." 
 
 Samir Husni, the director of Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, said that the magazine's attempts at a younger audience may alienate the magazine's long-time subscriber base. 
 
 "They want the young college male, but that young college male doesn't need playboy," Husni said. "With this announcement they may have lost the audience they had and may never get the audience they want." 
 
 After the announcement on Monday night, commenters on social media pointed out that the removal of nude photos may boost the magazine's articles. 
 
 "The Playboy Interview has long been one of the greatest columns in the magazine world," Politico media reporter Alex Weprin tweeted. "In some ways the rest of the magazine held it back." 
 
 Husni added that Playboy was "the original man's magazine that serviced men through advice and helpful information" while also dealing with the nude photography. 
 
 "In the past, it went through the hoops of the nude photos to offer help to men in all aspects of life," Husni said. "But now, Playboy has lost its identity and is in many ways frozen in time." 
 
 The Future of Media, a customized magazine ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Playboy without nudity: Will anyone buy it for the articles? 
 
 Playboy magazine is to stop publishing images of naked women as part of its redesign, it has emerged. 
 
 Its US owners say the internet has made nudity outdated, and pornographic magazines are no longer so commercially viable, the New York Times reports. 
 
 Playboy's circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in the 1970s to the current 800,000, official figures show. 
 
 However, the magazine will still feature women in provocative poses - though not fully nude. 
 
 'Battle won' 
 
 The decision was apparently taken last month at a meeting attended by Playboy founder and current editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner. 
 
 Magazine executives admitted that Playboy - which was founded in 1953 - had been overtaken by the changes it pioneered, according to the New York Times. 
 
 "That battle has been fought and won," Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders is quoted as saying by the newspaper. 
 
 "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture." 
 
 Gone, too, are the days when interviews with figures of the stature of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Jimmy Carter made Playboy so culturally and politically significant, says the BBC's Nick Bryant in New York. 
 
 Playboy's website has already banished nudity, partly to give it access to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. And its popularity has soared, with web traffic quadrupling. 
 
 A brand long synonymous with salaciousness is cleaning up its act, and all with the blessing - apparently - of the 89-year-old Mr Hefner, our correspondent adds. 
 
 Image copyright AFP/Getty 
 
 60 years of Playboy 
 
 Playboy's logo showing a rabbit head wearing a bow tie is one of the most recognisable in the world. The company makes most of its money from licensing it around the world to sell products including toiletries, drinks and jewellery, including a necklace worn by the character Carrie Bradshaw in the TV series Sex and the City. About 40% of merchandising income is generated in China, where the magazine itself is not available. 
 
 Among the magazine's most famous interviews was a 1976 conversation with Jimmy Carter in which the then presidential candidate admitted he had desired women other than his wife, confessing he had "looked on a lot of women with lust" and "committed adultery in my heart many times". Other notable interviewees included jazz musician Miles Davis in 1962; writer Vladimir Nabokov in 1964; and John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1981. 
 
 The Library of Congress in Washington produces a Braille version of Playboy, one of 30 general-interest magazines that are translated for the blind and visually-impaired. In 1985, Congress voted to stop producing a Braille Playboy over morality concerns and to save money. But a group of blind Playboy readers sued for their right to read the magazine and a judge ruled that the ban violated their First Amendment rights under the US constitution. The Braille version can be viewed here. 
 
 Playboy has gained a reputation for riffing off business stories, beginning with a "Women of Wall Street" series in 1989 featuring nine stock market workers - shortly afterwards, seven of the nine were revealed to have left their jobs. Playboy continued with "Women of Enron" and "Women of WorldCom" shoots after those companies collapsed. It revisited the "Women of Wall Street" theme as the global financial crisis hit in 2008. The magazine advertised for models, requiring them to have worked for a financial institution and expressing a preference for those with senior management experience. ||||| First it was the Playboy mansion, and now there's a for sale sign in front of the whole company. 
 
 As Playboy Enterprises rolls out revamped issues of its magazine, minus the nudity, the company is exploring a sale, Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says. 
 
 A sale -- which could value the company's assets at more than $500 million -- would include Playboy's web site, the magazine, the mansion, licensing deals, and various entertainment extensions. 
 
 Flanders said in a phone call Thursday that sale of the company "arose out of the interest in the sale of the mansion." 
 
 In January, the company put the Playboy Mansion up for sale for $200 million. But according to the sale terms, the elderly founder of the magazine Hugh Hefner must be allowed to live at the mansion for the rest of his life. It has not been sold yet. 
 
 Related: Playboy Mansion listed for $200 million, Hefner included 
 
 As discussions about a mansion sale progressed, Playboy expanded its engagement with the L.A.-based investment firm Moelis & Company. 
 
 "Previously we engaged them in the fall to grow the media business and to separately list the mansion," Flanders said. "And as part of that they had inquiries as to whether the company could be sold. And several well funded entities have expressed interest." 
 
 Flanders said the interest is coming from both domestic and international buyers. Domestically he said there's interest from a "well-funded multi-channel brand management company" and internationally there is interest from a media company. 
 
 He declined to name any specific suitors. 
 
 Related: Playboy to eliminate nude photos from the magazine 
 
 In the past, Flanders has said Playboy magazine is the ambassador for the brand, even though the magazine doesn't make a profit. Monthly circulation numbers have dropped to 800,000 from more than 5 million at the height of its popularity. 
 
 Earlier this month, Playboy entered a new era with its first issue without fully nude photos. Flanders says new advertisers have embraced the change.
– Playboy magazine has decided it no longer makes sense to try to compete with an Internet full of photos of naked women. The 62-year-old magazine is undergoing a major revamp and will dispense with nude photos when it relaunches in March, the New York Times reports. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders tells the paper. The change apparently has the approval of 89-year-old founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, the BBC reports. The magazine will still feature racy photos of women, but analysts say the removal of nudes will be a big boost for its articles, including serious journalism and interviews, CNN reports. Flanders tells the Times that the target audience will be young, urban men. "The difference between us and Vice is that we're going after the guy with a job," he quips. The Playboy company now makes most of its money from licensing its brand, and Flanders tells the Times that the magazine loses around $3 million a year in the US, which is a cost the firm sees as an expense for their "Fifth Avenue storefront." The Times notes that the Playboy website became SFW and got rid of nudes last year, which execs say caused traffic to quadruple to 16 million users a month. The age of the average user dropped from 47 to 30. (A major porn site is offering a $25,000 college scholarship.)