Are the Sailing Mags Dead?

[philmarks]

I've just trawled through Pepermint's long thread about the standard of the mags.

Hasn't their time passed? It does seem that the only purpose they serve is to act as an advertising medium. The editorial is there just to get us to buy, so that they can generate advertising revenue. A simple business model.

I've been reading YM and the others for 40 years (obviously barring the ones that were not in existence then). In those days, the business model was not so refined. Even ther private circulation magazines such as Cruising Log? (Cruising Association) need to take some advertising.

However, this and other forums is:
1. a much better source of knowledge
2. the debate is "live"
3. the experience base is vast
4. I get a distillation of the Mags which focuses is on what is really important
and so on

What I don't get is
1. News of new products (could get that from visiting chandlers I suppose)
2. Something tangible that I can read in bed or on a train (OK could use laptop on train but that's a no no for me)
3. Something that I can read in the head ie to loo avoid ambiguity

Colin Scott and other overseas forum members know pretty much what is in a mag a month before they see it whereveer they are. As he says in the other thread though, the mags still sell out there. In 10 years time internet access will be ubiquitous way beyond what we can imagine now.

I believe that the days of the mags are really numbered unless they move towards free issues (such as All at Sea - which is any case more "current" although heavy on editorial). They will act solely as a medium for advertisers. After all, we can get most of what we need on forums like this, and the generations coming up are much more web focused.

IMHO of course.

Phil

<hr width=100% size=1>Rgds
Phil

 

[webcraft]

I see a slight problem here . . .

IPC won't have much incentive to keep these fora going once they've shut the mag down.

Every month there's a load of whinging about the mags and a few people take their ball home, announcing that they have cancelled their subscriptions.

I agree that I find less every month in YM to engage me. I may change back to PBO for a while. I will however continue to buy one or other title because it's worth the cost just for this forum - the paper mag is a bit of a bonus in as much as it is something to leave in the loo for those Condor moments . . .

Don't stop buying the mags if you want this forum to survive in its present form. Many less far-sighted mags and papers have pathetic websites because they are scared that they will lose their revenue when people realise they no longer need the printed version. Don't prove them right - we could end up with no mags and no fora.

- Nick

<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.bluemoment.com>http://www.bluemoment.com</A></font size=1>

 

[VirgoVoyager]

I agree about the value of the forums, Phil, and the range and quality of information they generate (as well as a good laugh). However, there is nothing electronic and connected that is yet quite as portable and easy to use as a mag and they do still have advantages, as you point out.

In a year or two, though, with further improvements in mobile phone and palm technology - who knows?

Stuart

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[Talbot]

I find that I have to change magazine every year or so, or take a break from it, and then when I come back I seem to have renewed my enthusiasm for it!

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[LadyInBed]

A bit like canteen lunches, as I seem to remember.

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[claymore]

Ah, but.....

how could I berate the village papershop proprietor and upbraid him because I seem to be the last person in Britain to receive my YM?
How could I snuggle up to Libby Purves in bed as I will tonight?
how could I marvel on a monthly basis at what an ugly sod Cunliffe is - (I understand that when he was born he was so ugly, the midwife slapped his Dad)
How could I read the monthly snippets of how I should do things as a yachtmaster and hang my head in quiet shame as I face up to the reality of the fact that the gap is widening - rather like passing one's driving test - a thing I could never do again!!
No - keep the damned rag I say- its a monthly source of pleasure and damnation!

<hr width=100% size=1>regards
Claymore
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[philmarks]

Ah, but by then there will be other forums. I agree about tangibility, but I do see things changing. How long will it be until those of us who go to WHSMug and thumb through the mags every month will just look up the website. Of course, they may never make all the editorial available via the website, alternatively they may put a charge on.

Phil

<hr width=100% size=1>Rgds
Phil

 

[oldsalt]

Despite our moans, I hope that the mags live well into the future. It is easy to knock them, but look at other magazines in WHS, and you will see that the sailing mags are, in general, produced to a very high standard.

However, I and others have noticed the following trends:

-A general use of less words and more pictures. I used to find that YM would keep me entertained for far more than the hour and a half that it does now. Many articles can best be described as shallow. Perhaps this reflects the perceived changes in readership..

-Repetition of the same tests. Despite claims to the contary, how many times do you find the same boat tests in the IPC mags, or outboard tests in both YM and PBO at the same time?

-Failure to be critical about boats ( I think that the mobo forum has it mentioned that certain boats had live 240V terminals unguarded in a cupboard. Was this mentioned in their test?)

- Why the heck do we have the yearly charter articles? Give me multihulls, motoryachts, jetskis, in fact anything else apart from this poorly disguised advertising puff.


Despite my poor French, I buy the French mags whenever I can as they test to a deeper level and have much better editorials. However, to be fair, they probably have a bigger market, and budget.



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[kimhollamby]

We see a future for both

Magazines are still by far the best at delivering more extended features and pictures that you actually want to spend time looking at (as opposed to time spent downloading, however fast your turbo 3G phone with its extra large 320 by 240(!) pixel screen).

Web is great for topical bits and searchable bits.

If we get it right in the years ahead, you'll continue to want both. Unsurprisingly we are not unaware of that.

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[Birdseye]

In sailing (as opposed to motorboating) you have 4 monthly mags running to 160 pages or so. Say 80 of editorial making a total of 320 for the 4. Multiply that by 12 gives 3800 a year. And that in a relatively small consumer market, and whats more one which is mature.

What I'm trying to say is that there is only so much new stuff to be printed so inevitably topics get re-cycled. The annual "how to lay up" article for example.

So once you've learned the ropes, read the mags for the first few years of your apprenticeship, you inevitably get a bit bored with repeats

I have what my wife descibes as a silly habit of keeping old mags. I have years worth of YM and PBO stacked in the bottom of my bedroom wardrobe, so when I want to install a windlass or a new roller reefing, I simply look up the last article on the subject. No need to buy the monthlies unless something new appears.

I doubt there is enough ad revenue to support a freesheet long term even when you get rid of the printing cost by going internet. No doubt we shall see. That will really please SWMBO - me spending hours in the little room on the internet reading sailing mags. Shall have to get an upholstered seat.

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[ParaHandy]

I imagine most people viewed with horror the prediction a few years ago that printed news papers would be replaced by the internet. The idea was that you switched on the TV and, if an item interested you, you printed it of. It hasn't happened yet and hopefully never will. Indeed, Time-Warner acquired AOL for a huge consideration with the intention of providing on-line content of a quality and quantity which would enhance the earnings of both but, now, the combined asset value of both is less than the media cpy and the on-line cpy has been expunged almost completely from the corporate records as if it never existed.

So I don't see any danger of IPC fragmenting its market into paper and internet if for no other reason than that internet advertising rates remain a fraction of paper rates. Or ever having to because the public do not want it ....

Somebody (it might have been JJ or Kim) described the typical reader as one relatively new to boating. The old hands "grew out of" them (excepting those hereabouts who go to bed clutching their "Libby" blanket) and that's what from time to time happens with the whinging etc?

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[Chris_Stannard]

Interesting that everyone can think of what they do not like but rarely do I see suggestions for articles that people want. For myself I find the boat tests to formalised and produced by the same people. I would rather see cruising boats written up by cruising skippers, with a section from their wives on stowage and domestic arrangements and racing boats by a racing crew who could comment on the practicality of the deck layout. but that is just MHO

<hr width=100% size=1>Chris Stannard

 

[Peppermint]

Re:The problems are common to other areas

of magazine land.

Successful mags break moulds and provoke debate. Find new ways of approaching old subjects and are less reverant than sailing mags.

This isn't a question of revisiting subjects. That has to happen but often the revisiting is from the same angle as before and it's dull.

I've been sailing for ever it seems, but there's loads of everyday stuff that I'd find interesting if it was explained to me in depth. In motoring or gardening mags you get a lot more opinion from your expert, often provocative, and that can create a dynamic with the readership.

Anyway if they want a consultation I'm available at the usual rates.




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[jamesjermain]

Threads like this are of great interest to the editorial department of YM and when one comes along I pass a on a digest to Paul Gelder.

A few comments on what has been said here.

Personally I don't like reading the internet for pleasure in the same way as I read magazines. The internet, for me, is a work tool and source of information as I believe it is for most people of my generation (ie not spotty teenagers [why are teenagers always prefixed 'spotty']). A magazine like YM should be much more than that. A large part of it is about entertainment - cruise stories, humourous articles, descriptions of desirable harbours and anchorages etc. Where these have an informative and educational function as well, so much the better.

I agree, you can find out where to get diesel in Dartmouth from the internet, and even a sketch chart of the harbour, but to get double page spreads of photographs, artwork, charts etc in a format you can read on a train, will take a few more leaps into the techo future. In the meantime, magazines will continue to increase in popularity not decrease (see the groaning racks of any WH Smiths)

YM is more picture orientated that it was which is, I believe, a ggood thing. If JDS or MG had had the technology we have, they would have made better use of photographs and graphical material - Des in particular, and I can't believe MG, as a designer would have been far behind. I always resent having my allocation for beautifully crafted prose cut down, but have to admit that if the imformation is contained in a photograph, that is a more attractive way of absorbing it.

I am not going to go into a point by point defence of YMs current editorial poilicy or quality. In any survey we do we know that there are articles which divide readers, and articles which have general approval. The magazine has evolved over the years, as it must do to survive. Inevitably there are those who will not, for good reason, like the evolution, and those who, for equally good reasons, feel we should have gone further. This was always so, and Des had letters critisising innovations he introduced just as Andrew, Geoff, myself, Sarah and Paul did and do, and no doubt MG did in his day.

Compared to the magazine market in general, and even in the mature sailing market, YMs readership tends to stick with the title far longer than the average. Some non-boating titles are delighted to hold a reader for three years. Our subs renewals indicate a large percentage remain loyal for 10 years with a significant number staying with us for 15 or 20 years or more.

I have recently taken to the sport of motorcycling and am a complete novice in this field. I am also a newcomer to the motorcycle press. There magazines obviously have a brighter, 'younger' voice, but the structure of the mags and the type of article they publish is remarkably similar. As a novice, I find I love the sort of article I would pass over immediately in YM - product reviews, riding tips, maintainance tips etc. I lap up even the simplest and most basic information and struggle to understand some of the more advanced stuff. No doubt in a year, when I am fully kitted up and can strip a Pan European to its chassis in 30 minutes, I will skip these features and concentrate on the ride-outs, new bike tests (again remarkably similar in format) and 'cruising' features. The magazines won't have got worse, my knowledge will have improved and needs changed. I have found this a valuable experience to bring back to YM, which I have read for nearly 40 years and worked for for 24.

YM is an eclectic publication within the crusiing field, as it has to be, covering subjects from DIY maintainance to blue water cruising. Inevitably not all of this range is going to appeal to all readers. Our charter features clearly don't appeal to some of you here, but they rate reasonably highly in reader surveys - sufficiently so to be retained for purely editorial reasons.

I am interested that some of you like/prefer French/German boat tests. I have not read a French magazine thoroughly for about a year, but I have to say that those in Voile and Voile et Voiliers look impressive and were a good read. However, I don't feel the net result is any better than ours (in my unbiased and disinterested but by no means humble opinion). I can't read German but I find the appearance of the tests in Yacht less appealing.

Interestingly, I have been on boat tests with both French and German journalists and I can tell you their approach is almost laughably stereotypical. The French spend less time than we do on detailed testing and it is hard to see how they get their facts and figures together - they scarcely have a notebook with them. But they do spend more time sailing. The Germans are immensely thorough, measuring everything, ensuring that turns under power are done at an exact speed and rate of turn and spend so much time logging everything they hardly get behind the wheel. I exaggerate, of course.

Sorry to have droned on at such length. If any of you are still with me, don't forget you change as much as the magazine changes. Hopefully your and our general direction is sufficiently similar for us to continue the journey together.

<hr width=100% size=1>JJ

 

[milltech]

I was pretty much with you until you got to "All at Sea", it is a pretty descriptive title for a paper that has little merit and no depth. (Written with the slight doubt that it might have recently changed)

<hr width=100% size=1>John
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.allgadgets.co.uk>http://www.allgadgets.co.uk</A>

 

[sailbadthesinner]

certainly not
i am not going to risk dropping my mouse into the bog or my power lead ending up inadvertantly in bath having led the extension cable from downstairs
plus nodoubt swmbo would disconnect the phone line if i was not sat next to the phone connection

i think that the web site is an addition not a replacement
i am sure many people said similar things about the wireless when tv took off.

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=red>if guinness is good for you. i must be very very good</font color=red>

 

[Mirelle]

A recognisable ambiance

James,

That was very interesting.

I have been looking through a pile of YM's from MG's heyday - the 1930's. A young man full of enthusiasm, but also a very clever journalist in the leisure sector. The YM of that day was a magazine which you picked from the rack at WH Smiths (it probably cost a little more, then, than now, relatively speaking) as you boarded your train to work, because it took you, in imagination, to a particular place - the dreaded swatchways and creeks, with the Jack Tar stove alight and the remains of the somewhat implausible three course banquet on the cabin table as you shoved a wad of Three Nuns Empire Blend into your briar pipe, after a good "thrash" down the Wallet.

In buying the magazine, with its artwork (of which there was a very great deal, but many more sketches and paintings than photographs) you were buying an escape from the commute to and from the office. You might, if you were lucky enough to have a small boat, escape there physically for a couple of weeks in the summer and a few weekends, but the magazine offered an mental escape, there and then, for the price of a copy.

You could look at the famous Christmas cover, of a smack yacht snowed in, somewhere that looks uncannily like Tollesbury, as you shivered at Liverpool Street or Waterloo. Or you could look at FB Harnack's "Ready By Easter" and feel all the joys of spring fitting out, even if you only owned a boat in imagination.

That's what is missing, now. There's no sense of escape from middle class consumer drudgery.

Bring it back and readership will rise, I think. I am not suggesting a return to MG's creeks and swatchways of the 1930's, but some sort of equivalent would cheer readers up no end.

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?

 

[pandroid]

As someone who once harrangued Sarah at a Boatshow for YM 'being crap' and then not being able to articulate why, I have some sympathy with JJs position. I've found that two things affect my feelings to the mags - the content, and the layout.

Broadly, looking back, the Boat Tests seem to be of a much better quality than those of yesterday (although the actual mechanics of JJs tests dont always show through), but the gear tests less thorough. I'm not sure whether we really need Radar reflectors tested scientifically, but I know I buy the one that comes off best. I did the same for the liferaft, radio, torch etc etc...

I'm less happy with the Cruising reports. I'm not interested at all in the disaster stories, and I find the cruising stuff either superficial or totally UK related. When we went to the Baltic this year I found one article in the last 5 years of rags, and bugger all else in English. There IS loads of stuff on the Internet but its mainly in another language, and I had to go there (i.e. Sweden) to find it. In the end we wrote our own article for our yachtie association and put up a website for others. Having therefore produced both (printed and net) I've found that the net gives you space to spread out the issues, but its far easier to tell a coherent story in print.

However I've found that my attitude to the rags varies enormously with layout. PBO was dire BS (Before Sarah) and YM has gone backwards since she left (it now looks like a copy of ST). This is presumably because my taste doesnt gel with those of the current graphics editor. I supose I'm that shallow that I mark down the prose if I dont like the pictures...

On balance, I dont think the Rags are that much worse, its just that my tastes, and level of experience varies with time. I do think that some articles are less well researched but I suppose thats a factor of time and commerce these days

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.kissen.co.uk>http://www.kissen.co.uk</A>

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[sailbadthesinner]

Re: surely not tenable

i cannot think of many products that could be improved by returning to the 1930s
the ones i can think of
are
Meat is a possible and some other food. less intesively reared and of better quality so i am told.
cars. prettier but more importantly less available hence those who did have them got more pleasure from driving.

however your premise that returning this magazine to 1930s would increase readership i cannot see. the magazine has to satisfy a wide market of customers and advertisers. it has to exist in the here and now.

increasingly the people coming to sailing are cash rich time poor. they want advice and help to make sure they get the most out of their sailing. 'The most' has i beleived changed. when i first went cruising with my old man on a swan 37. we never stopped at marinas. we were looking for a good sail followed by a quiet anchorage that may or may not have a pub. said pub may or may not have had a shower and such shower may or may not have been used.

todays cruisers are a different breed. they want to have the convenience of pontoons showers restaraunts et al. they want to know what kit to buy from the swindlers that is going to give them more time,ice, power,speed or reduce effort.

the old guard is still with us and will contiunue to be with us as cruisers on a limited budget or those who simply prefer the Hiscock way, and long may they continue.

but i cannot see the magazine could survive on the old guard alone. there is in current ym somehting for everyone. i donot like it all and am often annoyed by, say blue water letter. ( this is on reflection of each article always put down to sheer envy barring the odd condescending remark about the locals)
but as a product i think being transported away is not feasible. another reason is that sailing is no longer for most people lonely trips up deserted backwaters. it is trying to find some open water to sail in without a hundred other voats bearing down on you and trying to find a berth at the end of the day in either a busy anchorage or crwded marina. how could stories of that transport us away?
the main way of transporting us away seems to stories of trials and tribulations. of nav errors unforeseen weather or gear failure. whilst these often make gripping reading we donot want to be transported there. but they do teach us lessons and expand our knowledge so i for one applaud them.

i think ym gets it right more often than wrong.










<hr width=100% size=1><font color=red>if guinness is good for you. i must be very very good</font color=red>

 

[jonjo]

Re: International group tests

> The French spend less time than we do on detailed testing and
> it is hard to see how they get their facts

Funny you should mention this. Yesterday I looked over a second hand LM30 at Hamble Point and the kind gent in the brokers office let me read through a 1981 Yachting World group test of motor sailors.

The group test was conducted in Cherbourg as a shared exercise between British and French journalists. Apparently 22 years ago the French were amused by the British attention to detail and lack of holistic yacht assessment!

The international group test formula sounds like an exercise worth repeating if only because the cross channel delivery trip highlighted additional points.

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