HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: LanceLovejoy on December 19, 2009, 2035 UTC
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Got a hold of the new issue of the MT and low and behold (as announced actualy in the last issue) , George Zeller's excellent monthly column on Pirate Broadcasts (The Outer Limits) is no longer a part of the magazine. >:( Considering that they have also inexplicably gotten rid of Glen Hauser's always excellent Global Forum column, I have to say that the MT is changing for the worse. Considering that the Pirates are one of the more interesting, unpredictable and thriving parts of the HF picture it's hard to understand the direction the MT is going and I fear it is becoming less relevent to dedicated HF monitors. If not fot the Stegman and Van Horn (and much of that info is available elsewehere) columns I'd probably drop the thing all together.
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Why did they drop the pirate column?
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According to the editorial accompanyment to George's last column in the December 2009 issue, the MT considers the clandestine and pirate scene to have but a "small" following, and so has decided to "turn the page over to other topics in 2010." Wierd. Looking at this board for example, the Pirate section gets far more posts than any oither section, hard to understand why they have decided the interest level isn't there. But take heart, the editorial geniuses over there did decide to devote an extra page to the Longwave column in 2010! Nothing against Longwave, but how many times are they going to run the same column on aero beacons and DGPS?? ??? Go figure!
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Like many pirate enthusiasts, I buy MT off the shelf, so as to keep my identity and address secure.
The pirate column was the first thing I looked at when opening MT. I decided I won't be buying it anymore. I am not abandoning MT magazine, they are abandoning me.
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According to the editorial accompanyment to George's last column in the December 2009 issue, the MT considers the clandestine and pirate scene to have but a "small" following, and so has decided to "turn the page over to other topics in 2010."
Translation: the pirates promote freedom of thought and freedom of speech, which is too much of a threat to the Republik, therefore the DHS has given an order to drop the pirates or the magazine ceases to exist >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(
Peace!
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Well, that's a Bravo Sierra justification if I ever heard one. The who hobby of listening to radio is a niche hobby , and I doubt the population of pirate listeners is any smaller than those in other niches. I was just going to subscribe again, but certainly won't now. I suspect there's another answer.
Time for a letter to Brasstown
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What if we all wrote letters? Think it would change this decision? Worth a try?
If so, let's post the address and a sample letter here for those of us less creative to sign and send.
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The managing editor is
Rachel Baughn
The address is:
Monitoring Times
7540 Highway 64 West
Brasstown, NC 28902-0098
or
editor@monitoringtimes.com
My suggestion would be to keep letters polite. Usually it's large numbers of polite complaints that produce a consideration rather that a few nasty rants :)
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Finally, retroactive justification for my not having bought a copy of MT in several years.
Hmm... that made no sense at all. It seemed almost clever when I first wrote it. ::)
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Yeah, MT not doing too good. ???
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From what i've read elsewhere, the nastygrams are going to outnumber any nice requests. ::)
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From what i've read elsewhere, the nastygrams are going to outnumber any nice requests. ::)
Verbal "cowboy diplomacy" may get some results. Maybe get them a new editor when the publisher hears the outcry?
Peace!
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From what i've read elsewhere, the nastygrams are going to outnumber any nice requests. ::)
The publisher (Bob G) wrote to tell me that based on a poll recently taken, the Pirate section was near the bottom. Sending insulting nastygram notes is likely NOT helpful, but intelligent feedback might be.
He's running a business...
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Does Popular Communications still have its pirate section?
(they had that big pirate issue with Andrew Yoder a couple years back)
People will just go there.
Peace!
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The admin at another site claims there's a new dedicated Pirate Radio print magazine in the works, aparently being done by one person, but it's going to take time to get it off the ground.
No telling what it'll cost if/when it comes out since the distribution would probably be in the hundreds. Most niche mags are expensive and rather thin.
.
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For many years, we had the ACE (Association of Clandestine Enthusiasts) with a monthly newsletter (1982 until whenever it finally went under, sometime circa 2000 I think?). The primary emphasis was on pirates, although there were columns on Spy Numbers stations, clandestines, etc. As with much print media, the internet killed it. Why wait weeks or months for stale logs, when you can get them in minutes now. Or, via IRC, instantly: http://www.starchat.net/chat/?chan=PirateRadio (http://www.starchat.net/chat/?chan=PirateRadio)
Of course, there's more than just loggings, and I think a print magazine (radio related) could survive with interesting feature articles. I haven't looked at PopComm or MT in ages, but from memory, they tended to re-hash the same subjects over and over.
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From what i've read elsewhere, the nastygrams are going to outnumber any nice requests. ::)
The publisher (Bob G) wrote to tell me that based on a poll recently taken, the Pirate section was near the bottom. Sending insulting nastygram notes is likely NOT helpful, but intelligent feedback might be.
He's running a business...
Agreed, but the cited nastygrammers are the knee jerk reactionary type and not known for thinking things through.
Posting insulting fake MT covers, making statements like
"Grove needs to learn about loyalty being a two-way street."
after they have turned on him and...
"Don't know what this new editor's background is, but she sure doesn't know the radio community. Tight knit, and if they feel attacked, closed mouth. "
after screeching complaints and insults in every way they can imagine. I hate to think what they have sent to MT.
I fear intelligent discourse would be futile, but i urge everyone to try.
.
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Niche magazines have a rough time making it....
Newspapers can't hardly make it and many have folded...
I hate to see MT drop the Outer Limits but I'm afraid it is a sign of the times...
The internet offers almost live time reward for the pirate operator...
Personally I like to hold books and magazines in my hands...at 57 years of age I'm afraid
the world I knew is "Gone"...
73 to all the radio heads we are a dieing breed.
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It's hard for any print publication, no matter the niche, to remain relevant to internet users. I relied on magazines like MT up 'til the 1990s and read Zeller's columns routinely. Zeller's columns and Yoder's books got me hooked on piratical malfeasance. But since the late 1990s I've used the internet almost exclusively for info about radio monitoring.
Occasionally I'd still buy a magazine for illustrated articles on technical matters, such as building radio kits, but I haven't even done that in several years. When I had only dialup access it was too slow to access sites with lots of illustrations, but now in many cases it's more efficient to use the web to search for relevant info.
Sad to say, especially since I used to work in the traditional print media (former newspaper guy), but they haven't adapted well. Traditional news/infotainment magazines clumsily tried to emulate blogs and websites. (Take a hint, Newsweek - magazine readers can't click on those URLs.) And websites/blogs started by magazines mired in the traditional print media tried too hard for too long to make their sites resemble a paper publication.
It's ironic because the paper I worked for, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was among the first - possibly the first - with online content, back in the 1980s. But the paper is now a ghost of itself and hasn't adapted well to electronic access. One of the few things older folks like my mom want a newspaper for is the weekly TV guide, but most daily newspapers can't even get that right. They buy from TV listing services, which provide too much inaccurate or incomplete data. So my mom and several of her neighbors quit subscribing to the local paper during the past year.
No surprise that MT is going downhill. The best paper-based periodical publications have been struggling even when they had a clue, and MT's departure from pirates - among the most active segments of the HF spectrum - confirms how clueless they are. Too bad they didn't get better acquainted with them thar fancy interweb tubes. They might have realized from the FRN, Alfa Lima, HFU and dozens of regularly updated blogs by shortwave fans that HF is alive and well, but mostly among a very different demographic from the genteel folk who once listened to the BBC and Deutsche Welle, or the hamsters who gnaw on each other on 75-80m and cannibalize each other on 14275U. (Well, of course pirates sometimes gnaw on one another too, but that's a whole 'nuther topic for a cannibal's recipe book.)
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It's of course true that the internet remains the best way to keep up with up to the minute info on HF radio and Pirates etc, as this board exemplifies, however losing Zeller from the MT remains a real loss. For one thing that column I suspect for many, it certainly was for me,served as a great introduction to the vibrancy of the Pirate scene that as a newbie I had hardly even known had existed. Also he always collected all the best little tidbits of info, even if slightly outdated by the time they saw print, that one might not always come across via casual internet chat board perusals. Sure seems like the MT lacks vision but oh well. I still can't believe they kicked Glen Hauser out as well, seems almost sacreligious, but I guess that's another story.
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For many years, we had the ACE (Association of Clandestine Enthusiasts) with a monthly newsletter (1982 until whenever it finally went under, sometime circa 2000 I think?). The primary emphasis was on pirates, although there were columns on Spy Numbers stations, clandestines, etc. As with much print media, the internet killed it. Why wait weeks or months for stale logs, when you can get them in minutes now. Or, via IRC, instantly: http://www.starchat.net/chat/?chan=PirateRadio (http://www.starchat.net/chat/?chan=PirateRadio)
Of course, there's more than just loggings, and I think a print magazine (radio related) could survive with interesting feature articles. I haven't looked at PopComm or MT in ages, but from memory, they tended to re-hash the same subjects over and over.
The ACE was a wonderful resource. I still have all my back issues. If there was a "golden age" of pirate radio, it was probably in the late 80's to early 90s. Lots of quality stations on, and a thriving underground community supporting the scene. The ACE was the cornerstone of that.
Chris, did you ever know what happened to Don Bishop (and why he chose to go off the deep end with his radio self immolation?)