Duplicate Articles

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viva

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I subscribe to both PBO and YM. I am becoming fed-up with seeing articles on the same topic IN THE SAME MONTH. This month it is passage planning across the channel, a couple of issues back it was towing a yacht with a tender. I expect some duplication over a year or so but not in the same month. It happens too frequently to be coincidence and YBW editors I think you are being lazy and disrespectful to your paying clientele
 
viva said:
You are absolutely correct GT35 is reviwed in both magazines this month!!
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Such a 'coincidence' is not altogether surprising, on the grounds that:
1. you can't test/review a boat until someone has built it.
2. If it's newsworthy, any editor would want to get it into print as soon as possible.

Check out car or motorcycle magazines for tests of new models. Heaps of duplication.

PS. Make what you will of the fact that the OP has begun threads on this subject both here and on Scuttlebutt...:ambivalence:
 
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macd said:
Such a 'coincidence' is not altogether surprising, on the grounds that:
1. you can't test/review a boat until someone has built it.
2. If it's newsworthy, any editor would want to get it into print as soon as possible.

Check out car or motorcycle magazines for tests of new models. Heaps of duplication.

PS. Make what you will of the fact that the OP has begun threads on this subject both here and on Scuttlebutt...:ambivalence:
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I posted on both because the duplication affects both magazines! News is worthy of duplication, cross channel planning and towing with dingy is not
 
viva said:
News is worthy of duplication, cross channel planning and towing with dingy is not
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I fully agree. And, writing as someone who for some years edited a leading (non-boaty) magazine in direct competition with others from the same publishing stable, I find it hard to believe that the duplication was planned. Trouble is, I also find it hard to believe that the two examples you mention could be coincidence. So, and apologies for the repetition: :ambivalence:
 
As a contributor to both magazines I can assure you that there is absolutely no collusion between the two. Very early on I sent an article to both magazines, who insisted that only one of them would use it. Later I was always asked not to reveal to one what I had submitted to another. They don't bother now as they understand that I know the protocol.
 
macd said:
Trouble is, I also find it hard to believe that the two examples you mention could be coincidence.
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I suspect that they are coincidences and I can quote another of my own. Last year I photographed a number of boats on visitor moorings, some attached in a seamanlike manner, others less so. I put together an article using some of the pics and beamed it off to YM. They printed it a short time later. In either the same month or the next, PBO printed an article on almost exactly the same subject, although rather more comprehensive than mine. Pure coincidence.
 
It's only because they are in the same group that this suspicion occurs.
Perhaps they both trawl the same forums for ideas about what may interest readers?
 
Twister_Ken said:
Professor Mary Beard has recently published a book on Roman humour. I've seen it reviewed in at least four national newspapers. I doubt they're colluding.
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That's a different issue than concerns the OP, akin to my references in post #5. Of course magazines, whether in the same stable or not, will review topical stuff of interest to their readers. If they didn't, there would no doubt be threads on here complaining at their omission.
 
viva said:
News is worthy of duplication, cross channel planning and towing with dingy is not
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There is no planning between magazines. Should there be? I don't honestly know, who would have the say which magazine covers what? Ideally the publisher, but how would they decide which article is more PBO for PBO or which how-to is more YM? Very soon there will be no crossover and each magazine is limited in what they can and cannot cover...So crossover isn't necessity a bad thing, as the same topic is usually tackled from two different directions.

What shouldn't happen is crossover of content at the same time. However.....

YM was the first magazine to test and publish the test of the GT35. I didn't know or care who else was testing her, I just knew that YM would be the first. New boat from a new yard, YM got in there first. Everyone else was later. It was news and current so all magazines will all try to be the first.

Then there is topical...Cruise planning - crossing the channel for example..This sort of feature needs to be at the beginning of the season, no use having a plan-a-cruise feature when everyone has just tucked their boats up for the winter...Where are most boats based in the UK? Yep the south coast. How do you attract new readers? Make contact relevant to them. How do you make content to a south coast boat owner relevant at the start of the season...At the back there, correct. Sell them the idea of cruising across the strip of water to foreign lands which is right on their door step at a time when they are looking to plan their big summer cruise.

Is it really a surprise that this feature appeared at the time it did?

Towing with a dinghy....three months before that came out was there some incident or engine failure, or news release about shed loads of boats calling the RNLI out after suffering engine failures? I don't know, but it sounds like an event or news story which led both editors to conclude a feature about towing with a dinghy was worth while.

Some sinister IPC led plot to publish two magazines with one lot of content, or just pure coincidence? You decide :D
 
snooks said:
There is no planning between magazines. Should there be? I don't honestly know, who would have the say which magazine covers what? Ideally the publisher, but how would they decide which article is more PBO for PBO or which how-to is more YM? Very soon there will be no crossover and each magazine is limited in what they can and cannot cover...So crossover isn't necessity a bad thing, as the same topic is usually tackled from two different directions.

What shouldn't happen is crossover of content at the same time. However.....

YM was the first magazine to test and publish the test of the GT35. I didn't know or care who else was testing her, I just knew that YM would be the first. New boat from a new yard, YM got in there first. Everyone else was later. It was news and current so all magazines will all try to be the first.

Then there is topical...Cruise planning - crossing the channel for example..This sort of feature needs to be at the beginning of the season, no use having a plan-a-cruise feature when everyone has just tucked their boats up for the winter...Where are most boats based in the UK? Yep the south coast. How do you attract new readers? Make contact relevant to them. How do you make content to a south coast boat owner relevant at the start of the season...At the back there, correct. Sell them the idea of cruising across the strip of water to foreign lands which is right on their door step at a time when they are looking to plan their big summer cruise.

Is it really a surprise that this feature appeared at the time it did?

Towing with a dinghy....three months before that came out was there some incident or engine failure, or news release about shed loads of boats calling the RNLI out after suffering engine failures? I don't know, but it sounds like an event or news story which led both editors to conclude a feature about towing with a dinghy was worth while.

Some sinister IPC led plot to publish two magazines with one lot of content, or just pure coincidence? You decide :D
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In daze of yore each magazine knew its own particular market.
PBO was small boats & practical / hands on how to do / make things.
YM was more for bigger boats who sailed / navigated further afield
Now they are all things to all men & fail
 
sailorman said:
In daze of yore each magazine knew its own particular market.
PBO was small boats & practical / hands on how to do / make things.
YM was more for bigger boats who sailed / navigated further afield
Now they are all things to all men & fail
Click to expand...

+1
 
sailorman said:
In daze of yore each magazine knew its own particular market.
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So what happens when the market changes? Keep blindly doing things the way they always used to do it, or adapt to survive?

Thankfully the world has moved on and days of yore are behind us.

It's now possible to buy a new boat where it's possible to stand upright forward of the companion way inside a boat, have a map which tells you where you are and the exact depth, see shipping without seeing it and buy a magazine in the middle of an anchorage.

None of which was possible when PBO was launched. The PBO market of 30 years ago is no longer relevant to boats and yachting of today. Of course there will still be those who want to make a saloon table from an ironing board, but those readers are few and far between. 30 years ago you needed to workout where you are with a hand bearing compass, rdf or decca, now you can do it on your phone...those sailing are changing, they way people sail is changing, sailing is changing so to survive magazines need to change too.

Magazines aren't just including a variety of subjects away from their core values for the fun of it. Have a magazine as narrow as PBO was in days of yore and it wouldn't be around now. It would have been closed down long ago.
 
Lakesailor said:
Brilliant! Let's have an article about it.
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It's been in PBO already - Wouldn't want to repeat content now, would we? ;)....it was a readers' tip

Basically the guy replaced the chipboard top of an old ironing board with a lovely varnished piece of wood - so he could have a saloon table that folded away. So far so good...The best bit? The lovely varnished wood was left in the shape of an ironing board so it could still be used as an ironing board...

Needless to say...it looked like a varnished ironing board:rolleyes:
 
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