Playboy names editorial chief

Playboy magazine named a longtime staffer with a literary bent as its new editorial director Wednesday, three months after the editorial chief hired to rejuvenate the 50-year-old men’s monthly stepped aside.

Executive Editor Christopher Napolitano, a 16-year veteran of the magazine who has been a features editor and head of its fiction department, will take over the key editorial post immediately, Playboy Enterprises Inc. said.

He succeeds James Kaminsky, a former editor of young men’s magazine Maxim who stepped down in April to take another role at Playboy after less than two years on the job. Napolitano, 40, had been one of three editors filling the editorial director role temporarily.