John Noll wrote:
Dan Popp wrote:
Gang,
Last night I wrote an email to one of the major Audio Industry
magazines. For the purposes of this post it doesn't matter which
one,
nor what my complaints were. I was surprised to get a personal
reply
from the editor about an hour later. As a reason for dismissing my
point of view, he said that mine was the first comment of its kind
he'd
received.

Say what?

I assumed (oops) that magazines with tens of thousands of readers
would
get lots of mail - especially as convenient as it is these days to
zip
off an email. Apparently not. (This particular magazine prints
very
few "letters to the editor," but it may be that they run every one
they
get!). Now this is a real shame if you ask me.

Surely I'm not alone in the impression that the overall quality of
our
industry rags has declined quite precipitously in recent months.
Some
have gone into political hackery and relegated audio to whatever
space
is left over; some have become faux counter-culture tracts; and
none
seems to care about preserving English as a means of
communication..

Like government and wives, we may ultimately get the industry
magazines
we deserve. Especially if we don't speak up. Next time you read
something that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on
end,
consider telling the editor your thoughts. After all, these good
folks
work for us.

Yours,
Dan Popp
Colors Audio
USA


I'd guess that it was EQ you were refering to. I was
appalled at some of the "writing" in the most recent
issue. EQ has been on a pretty steady drop lately, but
the current issue fell right off the table. And right
into my trash.

On the other hand, TapeOp has been steadily improving.

--
--

I do know that there have been some "changes" at EQ, including taking
their former editor, Mitch Gallagher, and their resident guru Craig
Anderton off the payroll and making them "freelancers". They have a new
editor who is not from the audio industry... sound familiar? Seems to
be a trend for companys to try to improve the bottom line this way.
Inevitably it backfires and they'll either close the magazine or wake
up and realize what's going on...

To a large extent, EQ has always pimped gear and been very marketing
focused. However, what's kept them alive IMO is decent editorial and
general eye candy (remember those cool photos they used to do with
vintage and rare microphones? I think it was called "MicroPhile" or
something like that).

All that being said, I think the publishing industry has suffered quite
a bit since 9/11/01 and probably even before that. Advertisers have
looked at many different alternative means of reaching their audiences,
not the least of which is the Web. So while some are going the way of
EQ, i.e. the "corporate fix", some are reinventing themselves to find
new ways to be viable (like Tape Op). Kinda similar to business in
general, no?

Karl Winkler
Lectrosonics, Inc.
http://www.lectrosonics.com