fishplate42
Well-known member
Following on from the Angling Times thread...
I have been a lifelong hobbyist. I know it is not 'cool' to admit that these days, but it is true. I have dabbled in lots of things over my lifetime but have embraced few. The hobbies I have embraced have grown with me and some have become a living. Most of this expansion of an idea has been due to Magazines.
I have been a fan of magazines from an early age. I have written hundreds, if not thousands, of articles over the years and ended up as Editor of a few publications. It saddens me greatly to see the demise of the paper magazine, but I fear the end is not that far off. I am trying to think of a way that magazines could move to make themselves more appealing to a mass readership but I am lost for ideas.
Before the internet, it was the easiest way to gain knowledge, find suppliers and, clubs and societies through which we would be able to network (although we did not call it that, in those days) with like minded people.
The magazine editors of today have a very different job to do, one that I really believe is destined for the scrap heap. I say this with a very heavy heart but it is true. Paper magazines are stuck in a place that would not exist if the internet had been around when they were conceived. They were the quickest and most up-to-date way of finding out what was happening within any specialist interest. Today, thanks to the internet, information is available almost instantly and can be archived and retrieved easier and quicker than ever before.
As Editor of the Woodworker, I would have to decide how often we would cover, for example, sharpening chisels. We would have new readers replacing old readers on what at the time was deemed to be a 2-3 year cycle. We also had a hard-core of regulars readers (buyers!) that were the mainstay of the circulation. Although sharpening information could be found in book form (I wrote a book about it myself!) it needed to appear in the magazine from time to time just to enlighten the new readership and update the old hands on new techniques and product. Although the internet was around at that time, it was nowhere near as readily available or accepted as it is now. If it was, then that sort of repetitive information would be listed there for subscriber access and save repeating it in the magazine.
The trouble is, all this has made the magazine all but redundant. The current pages seem to be full of lightweight articles with no real substance, advertorials and misleading 'facts'.
I spent Sunday afternoon in the back garden, enjoying a pleasant afternoon reading the AT, almost from cover to cover. Bearing in mind I have only been fishing bearly three years, I found very little of interest. The 'look what I caught' articles may have been interesting once but anything interesting is all over the internet before it hits the paper pages. Pages of cute kids holding fish, that were obviously caught by dad, get very wearing after a while.
I will not be buying the AT anymore, at least not religiously every week as I have been doing. I gave up buying the monthlies, for much the same reasons, over a year ago. In three years I now have a basic knowledge (very basic!) but I cannot find much to interest even a relatively newbie, like me in the paper publications.
I get far more out of internet forums and social media such as Facebook and YouTube than I have been getting from the paper publications. It has just taken me a while to figure that out. Shame, but I can't see anywhere for the magazine to go other than down.
Ralph.
I have been a lifelong hobbyist. I know it is not 'cool' to admit that these days, but it is true. I have dabbled in lots of things over my lifetime but have embraced few. The hobbies I have embraced have grown with me and some have become a living. Most of this expansion of an idea has been due to Magazines.
I have been a fan of magazines from an early age. I have written hundreds, if not thousands, of articles over the years and ended up as Editor of a few publications. It saddens me greatly to see the demise of the paper magazine, but I fear the end is not that far off. I am trying to think of a way that magazines could move to make themselves more appealing to a mass readership but I am lost for ideas.
Before the internet, it was the easiest way to gain knowledge, find suppliers and, clubs and societies through which we would be able to network (although we did not call it that, in those days) with like minded people.
The magazine editors of today have a very different job to do, one that I really believe is destined for the scrap heap. I say this with a very heavy heart but it is true. Paper magazines are stuck in a place that would not exist if the internet had been around when they were conceived. They were the quickest and most up-to-date way of finding out what was happening within any specialist interest. Today, thanks to the internet, information is available almost instantly and can be archived and retrieved easier and quicker than ever before.
As Editor of the Woodworker, I would have to decide how often we would cover, for example, sharpening chisels. We would have new readers replacing old readers on what at the time was deemed to be a 2-3 year cycle. We also had a hard-core of regulars readers (buyers!) that were the mainstay of the circulation. Although sharpening information could be found in book form (I wrote a book about it myself!) it needed to appear in the magazine from time to time just to enlighten the new readership and update the old hands on new techniques and product. Although the internet was around at that time, it was nowhere near as readily available or accepted as it is now. If it was, then that sort of repetitive information would be listed there for subscriber access and save repeating it in the magazine.
The trouble is, all this has made the magazine all but redundant. The current pages seem to be full of lightweight articles with no real substance, advertorials and misleading 'facts'.
I spent Sunday afternoon in the back garden, enjoying a pleasant afternoon reading the AT, almost from cover to cover. Bearing in mind I have only been fishing bearly three years, I found very little of interest. The 'look what I caught' articles may have been interesting once but anything interesting is all over the internet before it hits the paper pages. Pages of cute kids holding fish, that were obviously caught by dad, get very wearing after a while.
I will not be buying the AT anymore, at least not religiously every week as I have been doing. I gave up buying the monthlies, for much the same reasons, over a year ago. In three years I now have a basic knowledge (very basic!) but I cannot find much to interest even a relatively newbie, like me in the paper publications.
I get far more out of internet forums and social media such as Facebook and YouTube than I have been getting from the paper publications. It has just taken me a while to figure that out. Shame, but I can't see anywhere for the magazine to go other than down.
Ralph.
I then bought Autocar, Motor and Car magazine. I fell out of love with the latter because the road tests were becoming more Updyke than a motoring analysis. I progressed to Cheshire Life and Ideal Home magazine but never remained faithful to any for long. I even bought Our Dogs when I decided I needed a dog!
