RE: Midrange Computing is liquidating.

Ron, and all, A few years ago, a decision was made at MC to include less code and figures in the magazine. There were many reasons for this. One of the most important, probably, in terms of dollars and cents, was that advertisers had complained for a long time that the magazine was becoming too much of a "nerds" journal (my words, not theirs, but that was the gist) and they were pulling their advertising dollars because of that. As you may or may not know, it's the advertising dollars that keep a magazine in business, not the subscriptions. So a decision was made to add more content for managers (who have the control over the bucks to spend on products advertised) and the like. The technical information was still very important to MC also, but they really wanted to get a better balance (i.e., about half techie stuff, half management stuff). This is why in a given issue you might have one article on "How to Succeed at Presentations" or whatever, and an article on "Java Fundamentals for AS/400 Programmers". One management-type piece versus one heavy technical, how-to, piece. I'm a programmer, first and foremost, and I've always liked the "how-to" articles best. Ted Holt is the same way, as were several of the other editors. But that doesn't mean that we couldnt' see the value in covering a wider range of topics. And we sure wouldn't have sold many magazines or sold much to adverstisers if all we wrote about was RPG Subfiles all the time! MC, like any other techical journal, needed to keep current. There was just soooo much information out there, and so little space each month to cover it in, that some things just had to go. That's why we didn't print an entire RPG program source, for example, if it didn't teach the reader anything new. Think about it: What's the point of including an "F-spec" in every program source in the magazine when 99.9% of the readers already know how to code an F-spec? It's more important, in the available space, to print the most important pieces of a code source. The rest, the reader can download from the web site (well...they USED! to be able to download it....) MC never lost sight of it's primary readership, the AS/400 programmers and administrators that were in the trenches putting out fires day after day. But at the same time, like any good business, they sought to increase readership (which, by the way, was at the hightest it'd ever been when IIR shut us down....figure that one out, if you can!) and thereby increase sales and profits. So it's not that we didn't see the advantage in printing an entire source member...it's just that there wasn't room to do that and cover everything else. >From: "ron hawkins" >Reply-To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com >To: >Subject: RE: Midrange Computing is liquidating. >Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:20:40 -0700 > >Part of the resaon the magazines page count has been coming down is that >they have been offloading content to their internet web sites. At MC, >articles were limited to 300 lines of code. This included DDS, Command >specifications as well as RPG. Anything over that had to have some of it put >out on the web. They also put a limit on the number of figures they would >print per article (I think 3 or 4). > >I believe this decision led to a couple of negative results. > >1. People concluded that they weren't getting their money's worth based on >the page count of the magazine. > >2. More "fluff", less technical pieces were being presented, ie. "How to >Save Energy in your Office". > >Ron Hawkins > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com >[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of MacWheel99@aol.com >Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 10:26 PM >To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com >Subject: Re: Midrange Computing is liquidating. > > >Perhaps News/400 will raise subscription pricing, promising in return to >hold >the page count to 100 per issue for at least a year. Perhaps the Justice >Department will let News/400 buy out MC assets. > >MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac) > > >+--- >| This is the Midrange System Mailing List! >| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. >| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. >| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. >| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: >david@midrange.com >+--- > >+--- >| This is the Midrange System Mailing List! >| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. >| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. >| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. >| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com >+--- > ---------- Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com +--- | This is the Midrange System Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---