What's wrong with the magazines finally articulated...

Grimlok nailed it when he said:

"Serious question. Has anyone here ever picked up a bike magazine? I'm talking bicycles here. I don't mean to get too off topic but I'm also involved in a few other hobbies and want to make a comparison."

"This is going to be prettty general so cyclists bear with me. If you read a product review you're most likely going to hear it pretty straight with far fewer punches pulled than your typical hot rod part review. Hard to install? They call the manufacturer out on it. Bad design? Poor finish? Ugly color or just damn goofy looking? They let it be known what THEY think. Product worked better than they expected? It's made known. Make no mistake they know where the money comes from and I'm sure they do their fair share of advertisement/product reviews, but for the most part the manufacturer is going to know what a particular editor likes or doesn't about a product. Doesn't this generally push manufactuers for better designs and product in the end? Just think, a better product might generate more interest from the public - a novel idea. A typical enthusiast is smart enough to know that an editors opinion is not the be all end all. But would a certain manufacturer of M2 front ends have manufactured their product differently if an editor had seen a prototype at a trade show or done a review and said "Well, overall it seemed to perform well and installation went fairly smooth but I think the welds were a bit sloppy and the A arms looked a bit anemic." Maybe I'm way off here but I've seen this happen first hand in other markets. All I can tell you is with a few exceptions I'm not spending money on magazines lately."

 

He nailed it?

When is the last time you bought a part from any of the companies in one of the mainstream mags that was horrible, ugly, defective or otherwise upsetting to you? How many times would a hot rod mag run into that problem? I don't think the products bother me as much as the blatent use of them in projects (opinion).

Most of the guys who are makers of that stuff are rodders too and it usually is good stuff - at least I think. Pricey? Maybe, but bad, I don't think so. Fewer than what you'd expect in a bicycle parts book I'm sure.. Any one who IS making junk parts won't be in business long anyhow.

Let's not get too apples vs. oranges here. Cheap P.O.S. bikes can be seen in Wal-Marts all over this great land - and selling like hot-cakes. And would you go to Wal-Mart for your car parts? You'll get what you pay for....

I'm not being a smart as know-it-all or nothing but I just think we gotta have some perspective here. see smiles and everything - happy post - weeeee,,,fun.

I mean really. These magazines aren't THAT goddamn bad. I still buy 'em. Sometimes just for artistic inspiration. Usually cause the guys who write for them know alot more than I do - and are more able to articulate than myself.

I also think that the guys who write for the mags aren't any different than any one of us here on the HAMB. Car guys to the end. They just have to stick to the game plan and do what they are paid to do.

If you let the mag be run by the readers it'd be an amateur cluster-fuck anyway. Amateur builds are just that, and I don't need to see those - I got those all over the place right here in my hometown. Why would I pay to see that?

 

I like the editorial page in the front every month.
We have a new writer joining the staff this month. He comes over to us from another XYZ publication, MinitruckerZ Quarterly. He also worked for XYZ Publications at SkAteBoArDZ and Professional Flyfishing before that so even tho he don't know squat about hotrods we feel he'll soon fit right in and add a fresh outlook to the magazine. Check page 69 for his garage tour of Midas Mufflers showing the best products they have to offer and don't miss the great tech they do on page 77 showing the right way to install a fartcan and Dubs on a duce using their new kit.

Sorry JimA, couldn't resist. Leighten up DOOOD!
Scribe still isn't speaking to us since the last time one of these came up! And that's a shame.

 

Broman, grimlok WAS right. He was not referring to the "toys" Wally World sells but REAL bicycles that cost thousands of dollars. I too would like to see a product review in a rod magazine that came out and told us what a piece of shit the part was...................what, you say? Blasphemy? Bullshit, at least Bicycle Magazines have the balls to piss off big dollar advertisers by telling the freakin truth! in the end it makes for better product hitting the market.

 

I'm not defending myself on this one as I currently do not write up any installs or product reviews, but can you name an article which gave a glowing review of a product that you yourself found to be a total piece of shit? I don't know how expensive new products matter that much to traditional rodders anyway. I know the only thing newer than 1940 on my current project, a '28 Tudor, is a set of big n' little Firestones from Coker. This brings up another thing recently mentioned about the "evil monopoly" Coker has on vintage tires. My set was a little over 400.00 with tubes and awesome mount and balancing- I got no discount and I thought the price was KILLER!. To put tires on any of my late model cars it would be over 6 bills to put the cheap shit no names on it- and I wouldn't be admiring them everyday on my screen saver. How cheap should tires be?

Just presenting the flipside to what I hear complained about, but never answered. Feel free to tell me where to shove it- I'm used to it

 

A lot of guys take car magazines really, really seriously. A lot of guys take this hobby really, really seriously.
Neither is.

(From: just another word butcher on the HAMB)
-Miles

 

[ QUOTE ]
I like the editorial page in the front every month.
We have a new writer joining the staff this month. He comes over to us from another XYZ publication, MinitruckerZ Quarterly. He also worked for XYZ Publications at SkAteBoArDZ and Professional Flyfishing before that so even tho he don't know squat about hotrods we feel he'll soon fit right in and add a fresh outlook to the magazine. Check page 69 for his garage tour of Midas Mufflers showing the best products they have to offer and don't miss the great tech they do on page 77 showing the right way to install a fartcan and Dubs on a duce using their new kit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't tell you how much I share your frustration on this point, but as it was pointed out I (we) need to make room for the "new guys" as we can't all be "born into it".

New guys make this whole thing happen, which is great- but when they become the "authority" and decide what and who is and is not "cool" (whether it's in magazines, car events or websites) that becomes frustrating. Old guard- OUT!

 

Tman is correct. And those bicycle magazines are regarded by manufacturers as being not only as avenues for publicity, but as competent test facilities. When manufacturers want to know what some fanatical experts think about something they've made, it gets thrashed in the woods by Mountain Bike Action or tested on the highway and in the lab by Bicycling.

I remember when Bicycling did a comparison test of bicycle frames back around 1980. They built a huge structure that a frame and fork could be rigidly held in while measured, repeatable forces were put on it, in order to come up with meaningful data on frame flex and resilience. They tested frames made by over a dozen framebuilders - aluminum, steel, and titanium. And they published all of the results, and ranked all of the products.

Remember when Street Rodder built that highboy fiberglass '32 Tudor, and in one article about it, the photo caption read something to the effect that, "Aligning the doors took a bit of work, but that was to be expected." It might have been somewhat more informative to the consumer for them to have pointed out that the body and frame weren't mated until after the body had cured, that the fiberglassbody should have been put on the frame right away, that the right thing to do with fiberglass cars is to roll them outside and let them sit in the sun every day for a few months before the paint goes on, that the body should have been delivered dialed in rather than just put together, that when one side of the car was parked in the sun the door on that side of the car got all warped and didn't fit, and that generally, the whole body was a pain. But they wouldn't have done that, since, at the time, before they decided that the street rod market wasn't worth the trouble, Harwood was a big advertiser.

Yesterday a customer drove one of his '32s to my shop, a silver roadster with a Harwood body. He said that it was one of the last five, that "nothing fit", and that Harwood was "absolutely no help".

Dave
http://www.roadsters.com/

 

In a recent conversation with a veteran hot rodder who makes his own front axles from scratch, he told me that he had hired a testing lab to test every available aftermarket front axle - forged, cast, and fabricated; steel, aluminum, and stainless; along with an original early Ford I-beam. The testing included bending every one of them to failure. And he has all of the results, and told me that "nobody would publish them". I offered to publish the whole thing on my Web site, and he said, "All we'd do is piss people off."

Most of you knew this already: Original is best. Forged is great. Cast is bad. Steel is best. Aluminum is okay. Stainless is not to be used for structural applications, especially front axles.

Dave
http://www.roadsters.com/

 

You are right, I'm an idiot. Carry on.

 

[ QUOTE ]
Magazine writers are whores. They can't even defend themselves at this point.

[/ QUOTE ]

 

I love this place its a mkters dream but all the people that work in the mkting trade DONT get it maybe Cris Titus got it???what was that famous saying the world is your oyster ??? LOL or in this case pearl and flake and FAT MAN KITS instructions bite big time

 

Man o MAN! I gots to git in on dis.

As an independent (and I do mean INDEPENDENT) magazine publisher, allow myself to introduce...myself.

Here's the fuckin' deal:

Magazines are, by nature, irrefutably THE most current statement on the social trend, topic, subject matter and/or movemet they're dedicated to. If a spaceship came down (and sometimes, judging by some of the crap folks unload here, I'm convinced they already have) and didn't have enough room for livestock but took back a load of magazines, those aliens should have a pretty good idea of what's going on here on Earth at that moment.

Having said that, here's a suggestion: Buy as many magazines as you can comfortably afford every month. Just don't buy car rags, either. Buy Esquire. Buy Vogue. Buy something completely different than R&C, TRJ, GARAGE, etc. Magazines are the best bargain going. Where else can you get as much information and entertainment for $5 as a good mag?

And lighten the FUCK up. No mag is perfect. You won't agree with every editor. It's like the gubment: you can vote for the person you think will disagree with you the least and that's about as far as you're gonna get before you run for office your damn self.

Mags have to make money to stay afloat. Most of the time, that comes down to advertisers who want to sell their products in the open market. And if their advertising and coverage in a magazine affords the magazine to offer their issue at $5 instead of $35, than allow the advertiser's product to be reviewed, read the review, love it or hate it, write to the editor and let them know what you think, and buy it again next month if you can live with the editorial and the purty pitchers.

The consumer is smarter than ever and can make decisions for themselves. Magazine editors know this. Yes, everyone knows that editorial coverage of products greases the capitalist wheels. Noone working for the magazine thinks, "Hey, if we cover a buildup using these Milodon parts, we'll get Milodon's advertising dollars and some neat stuff for our cars and our readers will NEVER know." If the magazine is good, working for it can be one of the most rewarding jobs in the business. You get free stuff, get to go neat places and women love you. Don't believe me? Just ask Fortier. He'll tell you all about it.

But know this: no magazine sets out to deceive its readers. It just ain't good business. You may think the magazine ain't worth your $5. Hell, there are a few that I don't think are worth the paper they're printed on. But that's just because I don't think the staff knows what the FUCK they're talking about. They think they do. And their fans think they do. That's great and that's capitalism. If you keep buying and bitching about a magazine, then give me a call. I have some stuff I want to sell you.

I personally think that the culture and movement we're involved with is a National Treasure. I've said it before: much like the Japanese consider certain people national treasures for the contributions they've made to society, I think that The Hot Rod Way Of Life is a National Treasure that should be revered and treated as such. I hold so much respect for the people shaping this culture that I wanted to make a magazine dedicated to them. You may not like GARAGE and I hope you tell people why you don't. I hope you like it and spread the word. I may or may not agree with your opinions, but I'll listen.

I'll leave it with this: Magazines are like Howard Stern: If you like him, listen in every morning because you know which station to find him on. If you decide you don't like him, just turn the dial. That's the most effective impact you can have.

STONER

 

Dave, Roadsters.com:
I work in an academic library and write many of the handouts on how to winkle out information of various sorts.
I've been handing out a very short and elementary sheet on finding alternative (non-mainstream political, foreign, special interest group, etc.) news sources that I've been meaning to enlarge and improve. I would like to ask your permission to steal/pillage your excellent piece above and use major chunks of it in a handout. If that's OK, would you like to be cited as contributor?
This is a big area of need in academia--the kids have a vague idea that there's more to the world than they are told, but lack handles or even a good grasp of which news magazines go where on a political spectrum. Your stuff looks good. Bruce

 

Bruce, thanks for asking. You're certainly welcome to use what follows in any way you like. People need to be aware of these things. The text was quoted from the respective Web sites, though, so as far as credit goes, I'm simply the one who researched and compiled the following. Quoting from my post above:


Accuracy in Media is "a nonprofit grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage."
http://www.aim.org/


Ad Busters is "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. We believe culture jamming can be to our era what civil rights was to the '60s, what feminism was to the '70s, what environmental activism was to the '80s. It will alter the way we live and think. It will change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power, the way TV stations are run, and the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, it will change the way meaning is produced in our society."
http://www.adbusters.org/


BrassCheck
"Upton Sinclair did a beautiful job of documenting how the US newspaper industry works back in 1919 with his book "The Brass Check". The people who own the US news media are so corrupt and inherently dishonest it's appalling. Average, uninformed people sense it. They know the news is unreliable. They know that most journalists are lacking in integrity, but they don't know the why of it and how it all works. It's easy. Money. You don't print news that offends the owners, the owner's friends, advertisers or potential advertisers, and on the other side of the coin, you slant the news to favor them. You act like their PR agency. It's hard for the average person, who is basically fair-minded and trained to trust authority, to imagine such bald dishonesty, but every impartial person who's ever looked into the facts comes to the same conclusion."
— Ken McCarthy
http://www.brasscheck.com/


The Center for Digital Democracy is "preserving and expanding democratic digital media."
http://www.democraticmedia.org/


Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting is "putting the Public back into Public Broadcasting."
http://www.cipbonline.com/


The Committee to Protect Journalists is "a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the global defense of press freedom."
"A total of 37 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2001, a sharp increase from 2000 when 24 were killed, according to CPJ research. At least 25 were murdered, almost all with impunity. The dramatic rise is mainly due to the war in Afghanistan, where eight journalists were killed in the line of duty covering the US-led military campaign, and a ninth journalist died of wounds sustained there two years ago. This was the highest death toll recorded for a single country since 1999, when ten journalists were killed in Sierra Leone. Most of the journalists who were killed last year, however, were not covering combat. They were murdered in reprisal for their reporting on official corruption and crime in countries such as Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Yugoslavia.
Feng Zhaoxia, a reporter for the Xi'an, China-based daily Gejie Daobao, was found with his throat cut in a ditch outside Xi'an. He was an investigative reporter who wrote about criminal gangs and their links to corrupt local politicians, and had received repeated death threats. His family and colleagues believe Feng was killed for his work as a journalist, but police ruled his death a suicide. Petitions to reopen the case have received no response."
http://www.cpj.org/


Drudge Report
"We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be. The difference between the Internet, television and radio, magazines, and newspapers is the two-way communication. The Net gives as much voice to a 13-year-old computer geek like me as to a CEO or speaker of the House. We all become equal.
I'm excited about the launch of this Internet medium. And again, freedom of the press belongs to anyone who owns one.
There's different levels of journalism; I'll concede that. One of my competitors is Salon Magazine Online, who I understand is the president's favorite website. And there's a reporter there, Jonathan Broder. He was fired for plagiarism from the Chicago Tribune. And I read that in the Weekly Standard. But do I believe it? Because as much as I love the Weekly Standard, they have had to settle a big one with Deepak Chopra, if I recall. I heard that from CNN. But hold on. Didn't CNN didn't have the little problem with Richard Jewell? I think Tom Brokaw told me that, and then I think Tom Brokaw also had to settle with Richard Jewell. I read that in the Wall Street Journal. But didn't the Wall Street Journal just lose a huge libel case down in Texas, a record libel, $200-million worth of jury? I tell you, it's creative enough for an in-depth piece in The New Republic. But I fear people would think it was made up."
— Matt Drudge, speaking at the National Press Club
http://www.drudgereport.com/


Dynamic Truth — "What your liberal media hides from you"
http://www.dynamictruth.com/


The Electronic Frontier Foundation was "created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the first to identify threats to our basic rights online, and to advocate on behalf of free expression in the digital age."
http://www.eff.org/


Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting published this article, titled "Newsweek: Hail to the Chief", on November 30, 2001:
"If there's a propaganda hall of fame, Newsweek has surely earned a place in it with its interview with George W. and Laura Bush (12/3/01).
Written by Newsweek senior editor Howard Fineman and White House correspondent Martha Brant, the profile of the Bushes focuses relentlessly positive attention on the "First Couple's" emotional responses to the September 11 attacks. New details about atrocities by US-backed forces in Afghanistan are emerging daily, but the central question in the Newsweek exclusive was: "From where does George W. Bush — or Laura, for that matter — draw the strength for this grand mission, the ambitious aim of which is nothing less than to 'rid the world of evildoers'?
Faith, prayer, and love of family are the article's main themes, with almost no space devoted to political questions. "The First Team has been exemplary in the eyes of the American people," declared Newsweek. Bush "has been a model of unblinking, eyes-on-the-prize decisiveness. His basic military strategy... has proved astute. He has been eloquent in public, commanding in private. He had survived the first blows, made the right calls and exceeded expectations — again.
Bush isn't just a man of the mind, though. "Another source of strength," noted the magazine, "is physical conditioning." According to Newsweek, Bush "is in the best shape of his life, a fighting machine who has dropped 15 pounds and cut his time in the mile to seven minutes... He feels destined to win — and to serve.
The magazine was also thorough in addressing — and dismissing — facts about Bush that might be perceived as flaws. The president doesn't read many books, Newsweek explained, because "he's busy making history, but doesn't look back at his own, or the world's... Bush would rather look forward than backward. It's the way he's built.
The toughest questions were philosophical. "Do you think that Saddam Hussein is evil and that we should expand this to Iraq?," asked Newsweek. Noting that Bush answered without using the word evil, the magazine followed up with, "Why wouldn't you say he's evil then?", to which Bush replied simply: "He ain't good." Showing a diligence unmatched elsewhere in the interview, the reporters asked once again why he stopped short of using the word. A beleaguered Bush gave in, saying, "maybe because you're trying to force me to say it, and I'm stubborn... He is evil. Saddam's evil.
Newsweek says that the White House spin machine had nothing to do with their portrayal of Bush. In this interview, wrote Newsweek, "there were few mangled sentences. The handlers at the table were listening, not handling." Maybe that's because Newsweek was doing their job for them.
In times of war and crisis, it is doubly important that media aggressively seek truth and report it to the public. For a major newsweekly to turn an exclusive interview with the president into a puff piece would be disappointing under any circumstances, but it is particularly so at a time when the US government is taking extreme measures to cloak controversial military and law enforcement actions in secrecy, both at home and abroad."
http://www.fair.org/


Institute for Public Accuracy
http://www.accuracy.org/


Make Them Accountable
"The obscure but decisive factor of the 2000 presidential election was the issue of concentration of power in broadcasting. The huge conglomerates that own the networks and the big city newspapers desperately wanted to eliminate the federal regulation prohibiting one corporation from owning both the broadcast stations and the newspapers in a city. Al Gore and the Democratic Party supported the existing regulation, which was enacted to prevent a corporation from gaining a monopoly on a city's media. George W. Bush and the Republican party supported repealing the regulation, which would mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the big media companies."
— David Podvin
http://www.makethemaccountable.com/


Jim Marrs is the author of "You Are Being Lied To — The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion."
http://www.jimmarrs.com/


Me and Ted is "the unauthorized story of the founding of CNN", by Reese Schonfeld.
http://www.meandted.com/


Media Alliance
http://www.media-alliance.org/


Media Channel is "a media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide. As the media watch the world, we watch the media.
More than ever before, we are living in a media age and a media world. Nine transnational conglomerates dominate the global media; multibillion-dollar deals are concentrating this power even further. Yet we are also experiencing a technological revolution that empowers independent media, worldwide communication and innovative media projects for everything from community development to political action."
http://wwwmediachannel.org/


Media Education Foundation
http://www.mediaed.org/


Media Research Center is "bringing political balance and responsibility to the media."
http://www.mediaresearch.org/


Media Transparency exposes "the money behind the media."
http://www.mediatransparency.org/


The Nation
"For all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals profiled in our latest chart — AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media — rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go — always with a few exceptions — the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head.
In short, the news divisions of the media cartel appear to work against the public interest — and for their parent companies, their advertisers and the Bush Administration. The situation is completely un-American. It is the purpose of the press to help us run the state, and not the other way around. As citizens of a democracy, we have the right and obligation to be well aware of what is happening, both in "the homeland" and the wider world. Without such knowledge we cannot be both secure and free. We therefore must take steps to liberate the media from oligopoly, so as to make the government our own."
— Mark Crispin Miller, from "What's Wrong With This Picture?"
http://www.thenation.com/


Gergory Palast
The New York Times did a story about how gold mining companies out of Nevada have tremendous influence over the Bush administration. Nowhere in the story did they mention that George Bush Sr. was on the board of the biggest gold mining company in Nevada. They didn't mention the name of the company. Here they are doing a story on gold mining in Nevada and they don't mention the name of overwhelmingly the biggest company in Nevada, which by the way is called Barrick. And it had on its advisory George Bush Sr. It left out the name of the company and the fact it had on its board a former president.
How did that happen? I can tell you because that company sued my paper when I ran a story, and I have the same lawyer as The New York Times. You can bet that the New York Times figured out it was going to cost them money or create controversy. God forbid you create controversy; that would be considered disastrous in a news room. When you get a letter from a lawyer who says we disagree, the story gets blocked. The Globe and Mail, which is the number one paper in Canada, was going to run the story. I was told that the top people in the Globe and Mail killed the story. So you have absolute direct corporate influence killing stories."
— Greg Palast, in an interview with Guerrilla News Network
http://www.gregpalast.com/


People for Better TV
http://www.bettertv.org/


PR Watch provides "public interest reporting on the PR / Public Affairs industry."
http://www.prwatch.org/


The Professional Paranoid is the work of H. Michael Sweeney, who has written "the Professional Paranoid's page on disinformation" and disinformationalists, featuring the 25 rules of disinformation, and eight traits of a disinformationalist.
http://www.proparanoid.com/


Project Censored
http://www.projectcensored.org/


Public Information Research
http://www.namebase.org/


The George Seldes Archive
"Seldes published a newsletter in the 1940s called "In fact". It had over 150,000 paid subscribers which even today would be huge subscriber base for a newsletter. He was the first, back in 1941, to publish about the dangers of additives in cigarettes and the corruption of Congress and the scientific community by the tobacco industry. 1941. Over 60 years ago. He laid it all out. He also did very detailed research on the role Standard Oil, General Motors, Ford, Chase Manhattan, and DuPont played in building the Nazi war machine before and, in some cases, even during the war. The Nazis had "a friend at Chase", to take a line from one of their old ad campaigns. Anyway, J. Edgar Hoover, being the venal, mob-connected scumbag that he was, took a strong dislike to the independence of Seldes' mind and, in conjunction with the US Post Office and the military, drove Seldes out of business. If you were in the armed forces and were a subscriber, you got called to the local military intelligence office for a warning. Post Offices passed along the name of subscribers to the FBI, and FBI agents would actually show up at subscribers' doors and warn them about the "subversive" nature of Seldes' writings."
— Ken McCarthy
http://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/


The Student Press Law Center is "the nation's only legal assistance agency devoted exclusively to educating high school and college journalists about the rights and responsibilities embodied in the First Amendment and supporting the student news media in their struggle to cover important issues free from censorship."
http://www.splc.org/


Subverting the Media is an essay by David Guyatt.
http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/


"Until the 1980s, one company could legally own no more than seven AM and seven FM stations. In 2001, one company, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200. Profit at many stations is promoted by stripping staff to the bone; some of these places have barely any employees and no local programming. They are computerized corporate jukeboxes, reverse ATM machines. Their broadcast day is filled with the canned and the bland, a puree prepared at a place far away. Now we have hundreds of radio stations creating a profit with virtually no on-air personnel and no newsroom, no Associated Press wire, no birth announcements, no obits. And not least, no coverage of the police, the PTA or the Lions Club and no high school football scores. Nothing but digital music, commercials, and profit."
— Phil Donahue, in an editorial in The Nation dated January 7, 2002.



Dave Mann
Roadsters.com
http://www.roadsters.com/

 

[ QUOTE ]
Magazines are, by nature, irrefutably THE most current statement on the social trend, topic, subject matter and/or movemet they're dedicated to.

[/ QUOTE ]

10 years ago,I might have have agreed.
Now,that's old news.
The Internet has redefined "Current",now trends can change quicker than magazine lead times.

LONG time ago,magazines used to document what peolpe were already doing,
advertisers wanted access to that audience.

Now too many Corporate Empire Magazines exist largely to dictate and influence consumer spending,
as dictated by advertising dollars.The tail is now wagging the dog.