Re: 'Australian Railway Enthusiast"

["Michael Walker" <walker@hotkey.net.au>]

<snip post on magazine articles and letters - that's what threaded news
readers are for!>

To be honest, I agree with Greg's comments. The high historical content put
me off Newsrail to the point where I stopped buying it (although if you're
into history, it is a good mag with some current stuff, good photos and much
history) except for the edition where there was an article on the Eltham
station upgrading.

I think the historical content puts younger readers off (although many of
them would be using the net now anyway and I would suspect magazine
readership amongst younger people would be declining with the excellent
photo pages available on the net and current news and historical items
discussed in groups like aus.rail where you can filter what you don't want
to read).

Excellence can take a lot more time for relatively little reward (I've been
led to believe the 80/20 rule applies, it takes 20% of the time to reach 80%
of the quality - please correct me if I'm wrong) although apart from that, I
think it is worth trying to get it mostly accurate and high quality. If you
tried to get it 100%, you'd never publish!

Technical news and even long pages of routine sightings are probably
acceptable although with the realisation it will not appeal to the majority
or is only really useful for historical purposes. Again, the potential loss
in readership if most of the magazine becomes this sort of stuff must be
weighed against those who are interested in the T and S diesel sightings
10-15 years ago and in 15 years will be interested in the N and G and P
class sightings from today.

Having said that, not having seen the magazine in question I can't really
comment except to say if the descriptions are accurate, sounds like it is
going through a rough patch, at a guess due to other commitments taking the
time of the editor thus not enabling them to meet the deadline with a good
publication. It should either die due to lack of interest or pick up again
due to the publishers listening to criticism.

In terms of criticism, railway organisations aren't alone. My previous
employers didn't listen to their employees and went into liquidation and the
leaders at my church tend to brand those producing any criticism valid or
invalid as troublemakers. A lot of troublemakers in my church. Seems like
everybody knows best!