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Originally Posted by Octagon
On a side note, good to see you here Mr. Greenberg. The disappearance of your column was one of the reasons I cancelled my SAE subscription.
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Thanks so much for that. STRICTLY STOCK was a labor of love for me, and it's always good to know that it was appreciated by the people I wrote it for - my fellow modelers. I've received many e-mails expressing similar sentiments in the two years since I severed all associations with Kalmbach Publishing. I'm grateful to this day for that support.
MODEL CARS has the passion, the enthusiasm, the "by modelers for modelers" feel that SAE used to have before it became Kalmbach-ized. It's a pleasure to help Gregg grow the magazine. He is truly one of us - an avid modeler, and a major league car enthusiast!
Kalmbach, on the other hand, has no enthusiasm for anything but advertising revenues. All of their magazines, from SAE to FSM to MR to Bead and Button - use the same "formula". The content is tied to their advertisers and not to their readers. The contents of each
"feature" of Kalmbach's magazines, in this writers opinion, is soulless, without spirit, gusto, passion, or enthusiasm. It is entirely apropos that Kalmbach surgically excised the name "Enthusiast" from the magazine's masthead. If there are no enthusiasts behind the magazine, the magazine will show no enthusiasm. My opinion is now as it was then, that their "business model" - not to mention their arrogance and disdain for the readership of their publications - is inherently - and perhaps, as I believe, fatally - flawed.
Don't expect SA to return to anywhere near its former greatness unless it is sold back to Gary Schmidt or to another enthusiast entrepreneur and is the hell away from Kalmbach Publishing.
MCM, however, is a good read. You can feel that the people contributing to it LOVE THE HOBBY. You won't get false information about a product from MCM out of management's paranoid fear of upsetting an advertiser. You'll get the truth about a product, about an event, about how to do things - and everything about MCM is not done to placate an advertiser. Its done for the modeller, the people who buy and read the magazine. And that's not me shilling for MCM. Thats the truth.
Again, thanks so much for your kind words. And it really is great to participate here. AF is cool. Everyone here is cool. Bottom line: we're ENTHUSIASTS!
Best regards,