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Originally Posted by larrygre
"friends at SA"? Pardon me, but I need to correct you on that.
SA is nobody's friend, least of all any of us. Unless you have the $$$ to buy overpriced advertising space from them, they don't give a rat's ass about you. Same for FSM, MR, B&B, and all other publications under the auspices of Kalmbach. Believe me on this, I know from first-hand experience.
SA only cares about what their advertisers want to shill to you, NOT what you and our fellow modelers are really interested in. (I've had quite a lot of experience in this matter, having written for the magazine when it was called Scale Auto ENTHUSIAST before AND after Kalmbach bought the title in 1996. And the pre-Kalmbach SAE was the best modeling magazine ever. Well, MCM comes close and is trying hard  )
A simple rule that always works for enthusiasts of all walks of life: support those who support YOU. And that sure as hell ain't SA.
Just .02 from someone who loves the hobby and knows who does and does not give a #@$# about it.
Best regards, |
Okay, time to get off your soapbox ranting about the magazine and Kalmbach, not to mention you self-promoting about writing for the magazines. Now you get to hear mine, and if you notice my contributions on this site, I'm not into all this self-promoting, but today that will be a bit different. I guess I have this need to combine your rants with some of mine, and air yet some more dirty laundry in what may be a vain attempt to get off this crap and back to modeling. I will say that writing a book for Kalmbach pays far better than spending the same amount of time doing articles for their magazines. Far, far better. Not to mention the satisfaction I get from hearing people who really enjoy the book, and are getting something out of it. I put my heart and soul into it, yet it was fun to do. The payoff is more than financial.
I do have friends at Kalmbach and Scale Auto, and you are off base at least with current staff. Do you know Andy Lilienthal? To call him a "non- enthusiast" is a bald-faced lie. Same for Matthew Usher who has been posting his models here and is back at FSM after a stint as editor for another magazine, and Pat Mulligan who left last year for a killer job in Detroit. I happen to have a good rappor with them, and think it would be better if you keep your ranting about whatever happened in the past to a minimum because these threads become of little interest to anyone when they take a turn like this. No, Kalmbach is not perfect but they certainly do have enthusiasts on staff. How many corporations are perfect? Yes, Kalmbach is a company that needs to make money to survive-and to do that it must be run like a business. You don't want to hear this, but they are trying to get the balance of good stories/content vs. making ends meet. I know because they are asking their writers to do specific stories as well as taking submissions. I've talked w/them a lot, they are very open to good, rational ideas. They simply need more good contributors who know how to take professional pictures. They are also actively fixing the problems, like the Loren Bussewicz disaster. I told them exactly how I feel about that, and gave them suggestions how to fix it, and guess what? They are doing it. Sitting around bitching about something, vs. being proactive...let's see, what works better? Yes, they've seen hard times for a variety of reasons, and some of their hard times were well-deserved. They are doing what is necessary to change that. Give them a chance, there are good people working there and it would be a travesty to see them go.
I totally disagree with the statement that in pre-Kalmbach days it was "perfect". It was far from perfect; their former associate editor who became editor after the buyout was famous for having just a few close "cronies" and shut out other fine writers. It wasn't pretty. Ask Bojaciuk or Coulter. That happened long before Kalmbach. He made a few lifetime friends, but he also made at least as many enemies. I was always kind of perplexed when I would see him at a show, we were very friendly but I saw easily how he would not be friendly towards others. Many people who didn't write for the magazine were left with a very negative opinion of him. Some of those "formerly blacklisted by Kirk" talents are just now realizing it's okay to write for SA again, along with writing for MC. Model Cars is a good magazine, but I can't survive and write many articles for a magazine that doesn't pay it's contributors. Ask Rick Harris how much he got paid to take contest photos previously. Oh, you don't have to...he's quite vocal when you see him at a show why he's not taking pictures any more. It's a great magazine for a "club-like" atmosphere, but I don't get much difference in useable content in MC vs. SA. I can't afford to support the hobby, and support a magazine that is making income, that doesn't cover the costs to get that information to them. That is completely ludicrous, and most guys in the hobby have no clue that is what's going on there. Sorry, I'm not giving all my free time to what amounts to charity work, and that's what life is like for MC writers, unless they've changed their policies. I did get a subscription out of Greg for writing an article previously. That was okay, but I'm not going to put models on my workbench or paint in my airbrush by getting free subscriptions. So my contributions to MC will be infrequent.
MC magazine has repeatedly ignored updating our incredibly outdated club listing when we've tried to get it changed-they are going by information that is now about 15 years old, including a listing for a local organization that has been gone for years and the organizer is dead. We tried to buy advertising in it for our show, and couldn't get a timely response. They couldn't get back to an advertiser? Is that how to run a magazine? And many of us in our club including me know Greg personally, so that didn't help either in having any "pull" when it comes to getting things done w/them. Hell, he's been to our show. I know he's had serious health issues, but c'mon... Sorry, but I'm tired of the SA bashing followed by the lemming-like worship of MC magazine...it's obviously not coming from people who have any grip on reality or what is really going on. And it does the hobby no good either.
In many situations I end up the middleman, and here I feel similarly. I like both SA and MC, and the people who run them. I have good rappor with all of them. Take away the "business end" and I still like both magazines, and feel they both contribute well to our hobby. In a way they complement each other. Model Cars has more home-spun charm, but to be honest when I'm looking through any model magazine, I'm never left feeling 100% satisfied, and realize that will never happen. I'm more satisfied by the daily content on the web than between the pages of the magazines. Yet I can't give up my addiction to magazines.
My "charity work" is better off in places like this, I post when I can, give advice and show off my work. If I'm going to spend my time taking slides and doing polished writing, I'm going to do it for a publication that at least covers my costs. Or do like Pat Covert, and take my enthusiasm for other hobbies and interests to other publications that pay far more than any model publication will ever pay.
I enjoy your writing. I thoroughly enjoyed "Strictly Stock" in SAE, until it got to the reviews, where I honesly felt duped at times because what I saw in print did not match my feelings of what I was seeing in plastic (or had already built). I certainly hope it was a case of the magazine changing your editorial content vs. just looking at a box of parts not having built something and giving a sketchy kit a "highly recommended" label. That has been my biggest question all along...were you writing those reviews truthfully based on actually building something, or did the magazine literally force you to give good reviews to bad subjects? Perhaps I build more, or know more people that build, and I definitely have a cynical/critical eye towards models and I found myself utterly shocked at times seeing good reviews to models that needed a good slamming; actually that's not the real case, I feel an obligation to let readers know what works and what doesn't, and if it doesn't how we can fix it so it does. My feelings about magazine reviews...if it's not built, make it clear that it's only a review by looking at the contents. And by all possible means, build it before you write about it. I know you have the enthusiasm towards the models and to writing about them, but I honestly can't remember ever seeing your work as a builder published. Do you build anything? I'd certainly like to see your work as a builder. In fact that gets us right back to where this thread was headed...what would be the most useful kind of review, i.e. buy it, build it, show it off. Be totally objective and if you have to be negative, do it as constructively as possible.
Okay, that's enough for today. I have money to make with a pile of paying work, and models to be built in my free time.
Bob Downie aka ZoomZoomMX-5
Author "How to use an Airbrush" by Kalmbach
Feature article writer for Scale Auto Enthusiast, Scale Auto, and Model Cars Magazine
Contributor to Hobby Heaven Message Board and Automotive Forums
Believer in truth, honesty, and telling it like it is when absolutely necessary.
