What happened to all the great magazines?

[Snake45]

No more newsstands in my town. ONLY place to get magazines now is Walmart, and they don't have all the ones I want, so I have to subscribe to a few. 

I could save a lot of money by subscribing to them all, but I LIKE buying them at Walmart. Gives me something to read while I stand in line at the deli or checkout. And the funny thing is, if I'm buying a magazine, the lines are usually short or nonexistent. If I don't buy a magazine, lines, lines, lines! Ain't it always the way! 

[bobthehobbyguy]

The magazines really took a slide downhill when source interlink took over the magazine. All of a sudden magazine jumped from $4 to $6. Then they started cramming as many ads in as possible. Besides the ads Rod and Custom started doing howto articles that were ads for project. What was also disappointing was they dropped the monthly sketch pad.

The only decent source for magazines is Barnes and Noble in Chico a 30 mile one way drive.

When the local walmart moved into the new superstore the magazines were cut back and virtually no car books.

[Snake45]

8 hours ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

When the local walmart moved into the new superstore the magazines were cut back and virtually no car books.

My Walmart has been a supercenter for a decade and up till maybe 6 or 8 months ago, they had a pretty good selection of magazines. Then they cut the display back to about half the magazines they'd previously carried, maybe less. Not much left in cars, though I'll say they stuck with Car Craft and Hot Rod Deluxe right to the end of the line. I still get my Car Kulture Deluxe and Old Skool Rodz there, so that's cool. 

[unclescott58]

Sadly magazines are dying. I only subscribe to three any more myself. One is the other model car magazine. Two, Collectable Automobile. And three, one I just started getting, and most likely will not be renewing, N-Scale. Years ago, I use to read Motor Trend, Car & Driver, and Road & Track all of the time. But, as time moved on, I got less and less interested in the cars they were reviewing. I did try all three online at some point. Didn't like the format, and still disliked the cars. 

A magazine I really liked for years was Special Intrest Autos. But, then the publisher, Hemming's decided to make it "better." They expanded the content, broke into three separate magazines, and started publishing it monthly. The three magazines, for those who don't know, are Hemming's Classic Cars, Muscle Cars, and Foreign Cars (the last title I may not be exactly correct on). I started with all all three. And I maintained subscriptions to Classic Cars for several years. But, between storage space, and the difficulty going back and finding and re-reading articles. Which was fairly well indexed with Special Interest Auto, and very well indexed with Collectable Automobile. I finally gave up. 

I do love and have quite a collection of old car magazines. Mainly Car Life and Motor Trends from the 1960's through the early 70's. And I have a few Car & Drivers and Road & Tracks from the same era. Plus a sprinkling the Rod & Custom, Hot Rod, etc. And  I'm a big fan of Tom McChill, so I have quite a collection of Mechanixs Illustrated from the late 40's through the mid 70's, when old Uncle Tom passed away. Plus, I have a ton of Brooklands Books that reprint old magazine articles on different cars I'm interested in. 

I miss magazines in general. I grew up in an era when magazines and comic books were a big part of keeping oneself  entertained and/or informed. But, like everything else, time moves on. Whether I want to go with it or not. 

[NYLIBUD]

There are two Barnes and Noble in my area,BUT I CANT GET IN TO PURCHASE ANY OF MY MAGAZINES.?????U can wait out side,and they do drive up service,but not for magazines.,just cds,books,and all the other stuff they sell.Stupid calanders,toys,books,maps,etc,but again,no periodicals.And if u want a book or a Nook,or whatever they’re called,you have to call ahead,to make sure they have it,then order it either on line or the phone.No thanks 

[Rotorbolt73]

20th century world / culture we knew and grew up in is dying off. The good magazine writers are gone just about. Subject matter is less interesting. Too many advertisements. Prices too high. Younger people and kids do not read physical books, magazines anymore.. Etc. My favorite was car craft for years because it was more geared towards us regular broke guys on a budget. Hot rod got to where it catered towards subject matter and expensive stuff I can't afford..I got tired of seeing silver / bare metal cars with overhyped LS engines and stupid huge rims or blacked out cars with huge turbos and overkill NOS systems.. Or articles that were basically advertisements and instructions for products advertised elsewhere in the mags. Just not interesting or practical anymore. Last article series I got excited about, a few years ago, was a early 90s S10 V8 build in car craft by Jeff Smith   using a swapmeet / junkyard 80s TPI system. Real world hot rodding that can be done by the real world average gear head on a budget.. I was hoping to duplicate that to use in my Nova one day. Only reason I resubscribed at the time. Sadly,  the feature build slipped and skipped a few issues and I lost interest again..letting my subscription expire. Never knew if they ever got the truck done . Ohh well. 

[High octane]

MAGAZINES? POOF they're gone. This isn't the 50's & 60's anymore.

[Bugatti Fan]

Seen a lot of modelling magazines (not only auto related) come and go over the years. It has always been a bit of a fickle business, hobby publishing, so we will have to see how it all pans out. Over here in the UK Airfix Scalemodelworld and Tamiya magazines carry civilian automotive articles as well as FSM that we can get off the shelf over here. Scale Auto seems to be stable. Model Car Builder and Model Cars Mag are unavailable in the UK so do not know the SP about those two publications. WH Smith ( I guess our version of Barnes and Noble) carry a number of Aircraft and military modelling magazines regularly.

[Snake45]

49 minutes ago, High octane said:

MAGAZINES? POOF they're gone. This isn't the 50's & 60's anymore.

But I'M not gone, and I want my MAGAZINES!  

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 hours ago, Rotorbolt73 said:

20th century world / culture we knew and grew up in is dying off. The good magazine writers are gone just about. Subject matter is less interesting. Too many advertisements. Prices too high. Younger people and kids do not read physical books, magazines anymore.. Etc. My favorite was car craft for years because it was more geared towards us regular broke guys on a budget. Hot rod got to where it catered towards subject matter and expensive stuff I can't afford..I got tired of seeing silver / bare metal cars with overhyped LS engines and stupid huge rims or blacked out cars with huge turbos and overkill NOS systems.. Or articles that were basically advertisements and instructions for products advertised elsewhere in the mags. Just not interesting or practical anymore. Last article series I got excited about, a few years ago, was a early 90s S10 V8 build in car craft by Jeff Smith   using a swapmeet / junkyard 80s TPI system. Real world hot rodding that can be done by the real world average gear head on a budget.. I was hoping to duplicate that to use in my Nova one day. Only reason I resubscribed at the time. Sadly,  the feature build slipped and skipped a few issues and I lost interest again..letting my subscription expire. Never knew if they ever got the truck done . Ohh well. 

I agree with just about all of this. When I was young, I learned actual ENGINEERING and MATH from articles in the best of the hot-rod mags. Things like the physics of weight transfer, and coefficients of drag and friction, and how a collapsing magnetic field creates a hot spark in an ignition system. I learned more advanced electronics from tech articles in the model RR mags about control and signal circuits. Early adopters of then-new transistors were regularly featured. Tech articles would often run several pages of TEXT, and would EXPLAIN PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION AND THEORY.

Try to do that now, even in an online format, all you'll get is TLDR. Many people's attention spans are about on a par with goldfish. https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/    There's little understanding of or interest in the physical world. The populace is being dumbed-down, with less and less useful knowledge imparted to each successive generation by the "education" system, so the mags are thinner, what's there is mostly advertising and pictures, the writing isn't as good, the understanding of the subject matter is often poor, and as noted above, "tech articles" are infomercials for products being hawked elsewhere in the mags. 

Yeah, it's a different world. And it's not all for the better.

[stitchdup]

I prefer having something in my hand to read rather than staring at a screen all the time. Besides, does anyone really take their devices out to the garage to follow a guide? id much prefer oily finger prints on a magazine than my computer. It also feels more like value for money having a something physical instaed of digital that can dissappear anytime like like my book reader did. hundreds of books i paid money for gone overnight which dont happen with a real book

[Snake45]

21 minutes ago, stitchdup said:

I prefer having something in my hand to read rather than staring at a screen all the time. Besides, does anyone really take their devices out to the garage to follow a guide? id much prefer oily finger prints on a magazine than my computer. It also feels more like value for money having a something physical instaed of digital that can dissappear anytime like like my book reader did. hundreds of books i paid money for gone overnight which dont happen with a real book

PREACH, My Brother! Can I get a AY-men from the choir? 

[stavanzer]

Amen! 

[NYLIBUD]

19 hours ago, stitchdup said:

I prefer having something in my hand to read rather than staring at a screen all the time. Besides, does anyone really take their devices out to the garage to follow a guide? id much prefer oily finger prints on a magazine than my computer. It also feels more like value for money having a something physical instaed of digital that can dissappear anytime like like my book reader did. hundreds of books i paid money for gone overnight which dont happen with a real book

I couldn’t agree more.You bring your phone out to the garage,and someone accidentally steps on it,and bam,broken phone.How many times has that happened?I still can’t get into the local Barnes and Noble.I want my Jeep magazine.Looks like I’m gonna have to subscribe to JP.Ahhhhhhharrrrgggg.???

[1972coronet]

On 6/19/2020 at 12:32 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

When I was young, I learned actual ENGINEERING and MATH from articles in the best of the hot-rod mags.

Tangible ! Applied math and physics ! Imagine that ! 

No unrelatable horse pucky word problems : If a Graf Zeppelin is travelling at 55 nauts , and an earthworm is eating an apple , how many unicorns does it take to bury an odd-number of roof tiles ? Who in the H__L can relate to that nonsense ?!?

The little that I know about mechanics , physics , etc. , I learnt by reading --and applying -- automotive magazines' articles . No amount of classic "education" could touch that !

But , yeah , online "BLAH-BLAH-BLAH" is the future / present . Really useful during a power outage to pass the time ! 

[Bugatti Fan]

Modern technology. Gazing into a phone instead of looking where you are going on the street! Is that real progress?  (Joke)

[Rotorbolt73]

On 6/19/2020 at 6:49 PM, stitchdup said:

It also feels more like value for money having a something physical instaed of digital that can dissappear anytime like like my book reader did. hundreds of books i paid money for gone overnight which dont happen with a real book

Exactly. Thus exposing the achillies heel of everything in this current information age of digital computerized everything: Electrical power via the grid or batteries. All connected together wirelessly stored  in a invisible virtual world that you physically cannot sense or even access without a computer.  Everything in our world rests on that and that alone. Can be gone instantly quite easily..And that is VERY concerning..  At least with a physical book or magazine , I can still read and find information when the power is out. I keep a library of old car mags and technical manuals.. just for that reason. The knowledge and information in them is much better and more in depth than what is left printed today. Most young people today would not know what a Hollander interchange manual is.. Used to be mathematical equations were common in car magazines like hot rod..to calculate cubic inch displacements and cfm rates for instance ..geometry, physics, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering , electricty, hydraulics, even metrological things like atmospheric pressure and humidity etc...I learned a LOT as a kid on how to build , work on, modify and even paint a car from mags alone ..mags today explain none of that stuff anymore.

 

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Rotorbolt73

[webestang]

I only get Old Cars Weekly and Hemming's Classic Car. Both have said in their editorials that they will always be printed.....heres hoping.....?