Print vs WEB

the discussion on whether or not Stuka Stunt was hurting Stunt News raised some good issues.

I think there will be a place for both, for a long time to come. They provide something different and the different formats handle certain stuff better in some ways.

I know I will always keep up my subscription to Flying Models, as long as they keep producing a magazine I like to read. I can't throw Stuka Stunt on the back of the commode to peruse when I need to! Webzines are also just hard to read, and focus very much on little snippets that can comfortably be fit into a single screen. Not to mention the time wasted.

Both formats need good editors who can dig up relevant info and get it into a presentable format for the readers. Producing a magazine is not just collecting stuff and organizing it for publication. An editor has to have a vision of the purpose of the mag and keep focussed on it and present a consistent image for it to succeed. I get a lot of trade magazines and they all are going through changes, mostly brought about by the availability of modern compositon software. They are all switching to busy, scattered, almost unreadable formats that mimic web sites and just don't work on the printed page. Tom has done a really good job working with the material he gets.

You are absolutely right on the devolution of magazines into unreadable chaos. It seems almost universal. I have dropped subscriptions to several magazines largely because of this change in format. I am not as sanguine about the future of magazines as I might be, given this trend.

Hey guys, my 2 cents. I think "Da-Dirt" had a very valid point. I just wish he had left off the last sentence. It seems we tend to call SN a "magazine". Magazines have staff meetings, editorial goals and focus on a particular slant of the "news". SN is a NEWSLETER! Not a lot different in content and purpose than club newsletters but SN is way out ahead of the pack and of course, you have a club (PAMPA) that has a couple of thousand members so that changes things.

Tom Morris has done an excellent job of putting the whole thing together and keeps the focus on CLPA. The "Editorial policy" was confirmed last year by the EC. SN will print all contributions from any member as long it isn't a personal attack or uses language that is unsuitable for the general membership. This is as it should be IMHO. Diverse views and theories are what we learn from.

I got a little carried away so forgive me and I'll try to get back to the point. I would very much like for some of the threads on this forum to be condensed and put in SN. Those of us who are computer literate have the ability to get this information but the VAST majority of PAMPA members either aren't in the mode, or maybe in the mood. Having these opinions and thoughts published in SN gives all of us a way to absorb the information and have a reference book.

Dan's point, as I perceived it, was because we can get instant answers on the computer (I really appreciate that). Perhaps we are ignoring the wider audience and not serving the whole membership. I think he had a very good point.

Snip, snip snip!
>
>Dan's point, as I perceived it, was because we can get
>instant answers on the computer (I really appreciate that).
>Perhaps we are ignoring the wider audience and not serving
>the whole membership. I think he had a very good point.
>
>John (the only member of PAMPA in Pampa) Ashford

Well, that's one of my points, the larger being that I think some of us who are fully capable of putting together a decent article--I leave myself out of this category, of course--instead drop something into Stuka Stunt and then assume, incorrectly, that now "everybody knows."

Another way to look at this is to use the topics on this forum as inspiration. We frequently have suggestions that entire threads, or edited threads, be snatched from here, pasted into Stunt News. That is *not* what I am talking about. Instead, it truly would be to find a topic in which one has enough interest to research, or at least think about, a step in this process which I should probably adopt, and then to write one's own "original" article.

If somebody says, "Yeah, I'd like to support Stunt News with an article or two a year, but I don't know what to write about," Stuka Stunt very nicely answers the statement.

Or, once one has a topic to write about, as John mentions in a different way, there are few places better than Stuka Stunt to do some early research. Don't understand how that bigger prop gave you more level-flight line tension while flying at the same speed as before? Hey, meet Mr. Brett Buck; he's got a few things for you to consider before putting fingers to keyboard. Do pay attention, please.

I've mentioned this before, but do note that Tom Morris does not function as an editor of a for-profit magazine. He assembles all the crap we send him into a very nicely done format. But he *does not* establish a theme for each issue, *can not* be expected to go make any extra effort at all in developing articles for us.

We've got to do it ourselves, and if we can use this forum correctly the task can only be made easier.

>>I can't throw Stuka Stunt on the back of the commode to peruse when I need to! <<

Clearly, you just need a Tablet PC with WiFi.