You just THINK you're a WGH Ambassador

[asciibaron]

i'm going to dig into the heart of what i see as the problem with not just MR, but most hobby magazines - this might seem out there, but i bring it back to MR, trust me...

the other day i received my World Coin News magazine (more like a newspaper than a magazine).  the brand new editor graduated college in 2006 with a degree in Communications, worked for 9 months as a staffer at a sister publication and then was made editor - not an assistant editor or associate editor.  there is an executive editor, but he oversees all the publications, not just this one.

in the blurp welcoming the new editor, the magazine shows the real issue at hand - the internet is eroding print publications and the paradigm is shifting.  this girl is all of 22, knows nothing about coins, but has it as her goal to "bring World Coin News to our customers in multiple venues - print, radio, on-line and e-newsletters."  i just want to know what the trends in the market are, learn a little about a foreign coin each month, and see what big shows are on the horizon.

i see the same thing happening to my ham radio magazines, my train magazines, and my backpacking magazines.  convergent media is the key to survival in this internet age.  instant access to information has made us a hobby of consumers and not craftsmen (persons).  i have no idea what an on-line "radio" stream about the happenings in the world of World Coins would be about other than some tool i don't care about belaboring the minute details of things i have just read or will read in the next issue of the magazine.

MR has been trying to push customers to the internet for additional information - why is that - simple - they have all the books you could ever want to buy available at the click of a mouse button.  you are more likely to make a purchase from a website if you are already there - they hooked you, now they just need to sell you.  i'm sure at the end of some of this additional content there is a link to a book to get more information on the subject or technique.  Web 2.0

the cost of this is the plastification of our society.  why have a skill, i have a credit card.  i hear the same thing over and over again from the various circles i travel, model railroaders, coin collectors, ham radio operators, electronic musicians, and now even beekeepers - the internet is ruining or has ruined the hobby.  the best publication i have seen handle the use of the internet is the beekeeping magazine, Bee Culture, and Sound on Sound does a fair job with making content available without making you signup for anything - click and get the information on subtractive synthesis.

when i worked at MTH, there was tremendous pressure to make toy trains more like a video game, more interactive, more stimulating.  why can't things just be one thing and not have to compete with things they are not.  let the trains be trains, Tyco tried all the gimmicks.

to paraphrase a song that speaks to the problem...

the internet, the drug of the nation

-Steve

[GaryHinshaw]

A follow-on to Steve's post:

I definitely agree that much of the angst us middle-agers share about the demise of MR is a reflection of how potent it once was.  Think about it - there were two serious journals for sharing our passion, MR and RMC, and they came but once per month.  Both were very good, but MR had consistently better photos and was therefore just a bit more inspirational.  How many of us would race home after school when we thought MR might show up that day - only to find we had to wait another day!  Argh.  But when it did come, it was magic!

What a difference a few decades make.  Now of course the web provides all the inspiration we could want and much of the how-to content as well; and something new is posted every minute.  The challenge for the consumer is to separate the wheat from the chaff in this new era of Data Smog (to use the term coined in the book of the same title).  Further, since the web is inherently an audio-visual medium, the content that suffers most, relatively, is the written word.  It is basically taboo for a single web page to have more than one screen full of text for the good reason that it is unpleasant to read at length from a screen.  I believe that as our society gets more and more of its information from the web - or television - our collective literacy and attention span both erode.  (But my limited attention span is causing me to veer off course...)

So I think the web applies pressure to the print medium in two ways:

* They have to compete with the web for a reader's time.  It would appear that MR's response to this is to adopt shorter, choppier articles that look more like web pages.  Consider that a typical layout feature used to be 6-8 photographs and ~3000 words.  Today it is more likely to be 8-10 photographs and maybe 1000 words.  I think this contributes to the sense of a lack of "depth".

* They have to compete with the web for contributor's time.  How many of us want to take the time to put together a coherent package of material for the print media when, with a digital camera and a keyboard, we can post a snippet in less than an hour and reach the audience we seem to care about the most?  Based on the large fraction of material that is written by the staff (or extended staff), I would guess MR suffers from a lack of quality contributions.  Is that because few of us can manage to actually write 3000 words any more?

Independent of this, there appears to be a definite reduction in the number of pages devoted to scratch-building, including scale drawings.  This was an area where MR demonstrated true "leadership" qualities: they were actively trying to push the boundaries of the hobby in a way they arguably don't do now.  If that is because the staff is stretched too thin, we should help by contributing.  If they reject our contributions, then we'll know the answer for sure, and we can complain anew.

Thanks for reading my (550 word) post, 
Gary

P.S. The Kalmbach staffer I miss the most is David P. Morgan.  What a writer!

[DKS]

Great posts, Steve and Gary. Much truth in both. My $.02 looks at the contributor angle, as I used to be one. "Used to be" is the operative phrase here. As the quality of the publication diminishes, so does our inclination to invest in crafting a decent article, thus forcing the magazine to rely more on its young and inexperienced staff to pad their publication out with less interesting content, thus leading to further decline of quality... all part of a vicious cycle that is but one aspect of the overall picture as Steve and Gary painted it. Not to mention that many of us have shrinking supplies of spare time to put together articles that will more than likely get hacked to death before it sees the light of day. I'm not at all inclined any more to have my work mangled almost beyond recognition, assuming it ever gets printed. With the advent of the internet, I can get my thoughts and ideas, for what it's worth, published as-is, without waiting. Granted, I don't make any money, but I was never in it for the money in the first place.

You are right, Gary, the "rules of the web" do dictate that more than a page is wasted on an audience with increasing attention deficit. That has not stopped me from posting 2,000-3,000 words at a clip; if someone is really interested, they can hit the print button to save their eyes from the strain of wading through a "feature-length" article. But since the magazine has adopted the same kind of rule, I'm not at all interested in helping them out; the last time I contributed to MR, the limit was 1,000-1,100 words, and they seem to avoid multi-part articles like the plague, unless they're staff-written to support an advertiser...

[wm3798]

But at the same time, I think it's unfair to say that the internet has been bad for this or any other hobby.  As an "old school" practitioner, I can tell you that my interest has been deepened, my skills sharpened and my active participation has increased dramatically due to the resources, opportunities and relationships that I have available on-line.

When I detail a locomotive, I no longer have to wade through reams of paper looking for a roster to get an appropriate road number.  Now, I point, click, and not only get the number, but a color photograph showing details, and even weathering patterns.

When I want to install a decoder in a difficult locomotive, I don't need to wait months, or even years for an article that may never come, I google the loco brand and "decoder" and in an instant I have the information I need.

And of the dozen or so people that have participated in ops sessions at my house, only one was someone I knew outside of this on-line community.  These sessions wouldn't happen if it weren't for this new style of model railroad club.

I think the more accurate thing to say is that the internet has been bad for the hobby press, but not the hobby in general.  In fact, I dare say that it has contributed mightily to the notion that this is the new Golden Age... particularly for N scalers. 

I don't think that the problem is that MR has been "dumbed down" so much as it has been exposed as being not nearly as nimble and deep as the internet resources that it competes with.

Lee

[Wlal13again]

I buy it when and only when there is an article that I have interest in. Which aint much anymore. I like many of you could not wait for the new issue of MR to come out each month. The 1978 article about Jim Hedigers Ohio Southern got me hooked, the Clinchfield got me thinking about N even though it took almost 20 years to put track down. Maybe it was a better pubilcation back then, as Dave said, except for the LHS, a few local layouts, MR was the only portal to the world of model railroading we had.  I really miss it...

[GaryHinshaw]

Lee - I completely agree with you that the web has been good for the hobby, in all the ways you mention and more!  For example, to your list I would add: knowledge of and access to new products, and Railwire   .  But, as you note, it has arguably been bad for the print media, and for literacy in general. 

David - Interesting perspective.  I imagine that just as a bad editor can be frustrating to work with, a good editor can be a joy - if you can find one.  With the web, the burden of editing falls to the reader; but we adapt.

Cheers,
Gary

[DKS]

But at the same time, I think it's unfair to say that the internet has been bad for this or any other hobby.

I have certainly not tried to imply that the internet has degraded the hobby itself; it's just thrown a wrench into the world of print publishing. That said, I do feel MR has both been dumbed down and has not been as "nimble" as it needs to be to remain competitive and viable.

I'm with you on the deepening interest in the hobby. The Internet has certainly made research a simple and pleasant experience, as you say. Not to mention it has made buying products far more convenient--even as it hurts the LHS, it has done wonders for the cottage industries. How great is it to be able to order some esoteric detailing kit from a German manufacturer with just a few clicks?

[inkaneer]

...The third is MR and their article on building the Clinchfield in N gauge.  With out these three items N gauge would never be what it is today.

...and that's precisely the point.  What MR was and what it is now are two different things.  I long for the MR of the 70s and 80s (and even the 90s).  Certainly N scale is in a far better place now than just 10 years ago, but alas, we cannot say that about MR which did, as we all acknowledge, once promote the scale so well.

Granted, all three entities you mention have received actual "bashing," but with only a few exceptions I think we are expressing legitimate concerns regarding MR's current shortcomings.  Not every negative comment is "bashing."  If everything but accolades and back-patting constitutes bashing, then the terrorists have already won!

Maybe its the other way around.  Maybe we aren't what we used to be.  I always viewed MR as aimed at the entry level modeler who needs to accumulate the knowledge that we have.  But how many times do we want to read how to install flextrack, how to ballast or how to handlay a turnout?  How many scenery articles do you want?  Every now and then some new technique comes along and we all receive the benefit. But most things stay pretty much the same.   We have and need MR to nurture those entry level people.  What we need though is something devoted to the more advanced modeler, those who have more or less mastered the basics.  Hundman, I think, attempted this but got bogged down doing trees probably because he was forced to rely on his own input when contributors did not contribute sufficiently to maintain the magazine.   

[Dave V]

I think MR used to serve two roles well...  They used to have enough to keep a kid just starting out happy and inspired, yet could still publish stuff over my head for the old-timers.  I remember an article on scrachbuilding a D&RGW short caboose from styrene, and not knowing what styrene was!  Yet I never lost interest.  But lately, it seems dumbed-down all-around (except for the DCC stuff).  Moreover, the emphasis on money, as opposed to skill, as the key to enjoying the hobby, is disturbing.

This month's issue; case in point.

The Virginia and Western layout was very well done.  Considering its size, and all the handlaid track, pretty impressive old-school sort of layout.  A bit heavy on the "spaghetti," but otherwise good.

I also liked the weathering how-to.

But...  Okay, look at that engine terminal layout feature.  The photographs are pretty dark and somewhat out-of-focus.  But I think to myself "well, at least he did a nice job ballasting."  No, he didn't.  The layout was built by Custom Model Railroads.

Look at the MR project layout feature.  Adding a pickup truck and a bulldozer to a dirt lot.  If this had been the April issue, I'd have figured that was the joke.

Then look at the product reviews.  I'm an ex-narrow gauger, so I was pleased to see two narrow gauge products reviewed.  One was Bachmann's monster $1,400 G scale K27.  Wow...  Beautiful, but not in this lifetime!  The other was a pair of pre-built D&RGW 3000-series box cars.  Anyone in HOn3 remember building the old Rail Line resin kits?  Not exactly fun, but they did take skill.  Now for close to $40 you can get one already built and lettered, and for almost $50 you can buy them weathered.  Narrow gauge used to be hardcore craftsman country...  But "I want it now" has made it narrow gauge too.  All for the right price.

"But I want an oompaloompa now Daddy!!!"

[asciibaron]

i used to do narrow gauge as well (thanks to Dime Bag Malcolm and his San Juan Central).  i was way over my head, but i had some track, a single brass loco, and some cars.  i have been thinking long and hard about doing an EBT layout, but the problem there is operations - move loaded hoppers north and MTYs south.  one train works the mine, one train is the passenger local.  not much in the way of excitment, but i digress....

i really want to hand lay track and have been thinking of building another HO switching layout.  the only way to keep craftsmenship in the hobby is to practice it.  Tom Mann has been practicing too much, his forearms are HUGE.


-Steve

[tom mann]

Look at the MR project layout feature.  Adding a pickup truck and a bulldozer to a dirt lot.  If this had been the April issue, I'd have figured that was the joke.

Too funny.  Of all the things that are involved in building a layout, you think that they could have come up with something better.  Next month: "Learn How Cody Removes Products From Packaging."

[asciibaron]

Next month: "Learn How Cody Removes Products From Packaging."

he said "package"

thread over

[wm3798]

Not be overly zealous, but I noticed in the "news" page that they hired another inexperienced dim bulb (formerly an intern at "fine scale modeler") to be an editorial associate.  Note that they don't use the term "staff writer".  More Walthers press releases are on the way...

Lee

[biker_ray_pa]

I am so $#@$#@# sick and tired of the "uber- dorks" at Kalmbach I could switch to bead threading or another non Kalmbach hobby.

a bit late, but I just realized....try again. Bead threading is out.  ;D

http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/beading-beadandbutton-magazine.html

http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/beading-beadstyle-magazine.html


RH

[Hyperion]

But...  Okay, look at that engine terminal layout feature.  The photographs are pretty dark and somewhat out-of-focus.  But I think to myself "well, at least he did a nice job ballasting."  No, he didn't.  The layout was built by Custom Model Railroads.

Yeah, that irked me.  Last time I checked, I subscribed to "Model Railroader" not "Look Who Has the Biggest Checkbook Monthly".

If you're gonna run stories on those layouts, that's fine.  But talk to the guy that actually built the thing, the one who can give you insight into it, why he did what he did, how he did anything perhaps a bit unusual, etc -- you know, the actual model railroader here.

Look at the MR project layout feature.  Adding a pickup truck and a bulldozer to a dirt lot.  If this had been the April issue, I'd have figured that was the joke.

Aside from being completely asinine, am I the only one that thought they made that truck and dozer look worse when they were done?  The photo on the bottom of the first page, what they looked like after their first wash, looks more realistic IMHO than the finished product.


And then half the articles in the issue were just looking back at previous layouts, complete with recycled photographs.  I'm alright with going and looking at the same layout again as long as there's something new to bring to the table, even if it's some new photos.  If they can add a little something new to make an article out of, that's even better -- Eric Brooman (Utah Belt) and Pelle Soeberg come to mind.

When I started subscribing to MR in the late-90's, the average issue was 175 pages and $3.95.  Today the average issue is 125 pages (with more ads) and shrinking and the it costs $5.95.  The layout articles have gotten shorter, there's rarely any insets in the articles explaining how the author accomplished something in some interesting manner, the how-to articles have gotten simpler, and scratchbuilding and/or kitbashing articles of which every issue had at least a couple are almost non-existant.

When I first started out, I didn't understand a damn thing in most of those articles (and if they start talking electrical circuits, I still don't) but MR was always good at making it seem like even I could do it.  They've always been very good about making things very easy to understand with lots of clear photographs -- something that the magazines out there that do have those kinds of articles in them, generally can't claim in my opinion. 

Frankly, by taking out all those kinds of things out of their magazine, yet still featuring layouts that are full of that sort of craftsmanship, all they do is make new people feel like they can never have a layout like that.

...at least not unless they go buy their layout from one of the advertisers.

I'm waiting for the day when the cover shot is straight RTR trainset, complete with Unitrak and Life-Like trees.