Originally Posted by
Mr Danw
Are there any cycling mags out that are geared toward regular real world cyclists? Bicycling Mag is a big ad and not a very good one at that.
Short answer: no. Long answer: Advertising pays the bills when it comes to the production of magazines. I'm convinced the only reason they charge you $9.95 or whatever Bicycling Magazine costs these days is because people tend to assume something they pay for has more credibility than something they can receive for free. Otherwise, why do they then give you the option to get it for half the price and call it a "subscription"? Or more to the point, why do people keep buying magazines like Bicycling when they can find the same information for free on the Internet?
"Regular real world cyclists" usually aren't the type of people to respond to the ads. The people who respond to the ads are the newbies who don't know any better, or the people who just buy things for the "bling" factor. This is probably why they keep running the same articles from 1983 over and over again (I recall reading a quote from a magazine editor once that actually admitted as much, and pointed out that the average subscriber usually cancels after two years anyway). The bottom line is that advertising space pays more than subscriptions, so the publishers will always direct the content of the magazine to the people who buy from the advertisers.
Admittedly, Cycling Plus seems to be the exception from the one or two issues that I've seen, but out here it arrives three months out of date and costs so much that it's just quicker and cheaper to find the information I need on the Internet.
__________________
I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.