Amer. Magazine "Motorcylist" Stops Print after 108 yrs

[Ryan]

From the last paragraph of the infamous page 10:
"Motorcycles and their stories have always have always been constrained by the trim and tidy edges of magazines. They're deeply physical things, and as this issue shows, a delight to the senses. They'll be served well by the future of publishing, where we can hear them-sense them- rather than imagining them off the page."

To me, that says our current crop of writers can't weave a tale that will draw the reader in, can't describe an emotion, sound, feeling, sensation, or vision in an enticing way like Egan et al, and we have given up. Rather than reading about "the sound of kitten farts (thank you for that vision, Mr. Roper!) they will simply show a picture, play an audio file, and have some hack say "The BMW has a quiet, unassuming exhaust note."

But the biggest atrocity  is that I will have to take my phone or laptop into the bathroom so I have something to read, and that is unnatural and just plain wrong.

[LowRyter]

Web content is essentially amatuer multimedia.  The videos and commentary are no better than the written word.  So it's barely the jack of all trades but certainly master of none.  I for one really don't care for a video to pop up when I want to read something.  Then I read part of it and think screw it. 

Frankly, you'll find better writing and insight on Wild Guzzi vs almost anyplace on the web.  That's for good or bad.   

[kirby1923]

Thing is, I never bought a moto magazine for its literary content, yeah a funny or clever story here and there was welcome but I was more interested in the machines, the travel logs and the technical stuff. But literature??come on...

Want good literature, read a novel or better yet an old classic.

Sorry to see technology driving the modern lifestyle and computers are handy (required!?) for sure but I for one am not addicted to the constant deluge of information which is largely frivolous, and Google is not your friend.

my .02c

:-)

[Two Checks]

How many magazines can do the same "comparo" or "shootout" every month?
I used to subscribe to Cycle, Cycle World, Rider and Road Rider, which became MCN.
Cycle and Cycle WOrld were pretty much the same mag, and seemed to focus on crotch rockets and racing. Not my cup of tea.
Road Rider was a great mag and when it went to no color, etc I was concerned but grew to like it but it seemed to change.
Rider was more touring oriented but fell into the comparo and shootout trap. It got old.
Then I started seeing repetition in the ride stories and editorials, plus as contributors submitted articles to other mags, they were merely old articles that I had read years ago.
They were no longer enjoyable so I let the scripts lapse.

[Testarossa]

Cycle and Cycle World did sort of become clones, and there was a reason beyond the obvious 1 vs 2 competition. Cycle was owned by Ziff-Davis from 1966 and Ziff liked to hire top talent, so the 70s were the era of Jennings, Nielson and Schilling, who were great riders who could ride (remember Nielson winning Daytona in '76 on a Ducati?). Then in '85 Ziff sold the magazine to CBS, which already owned Cycle World. The two magazines gradually became sort of VW and Audi, or Chevy and Pontiac. The partnership was unsustainable. After being sold off a couple more times, Hachette killed Cycle and kept Cycle World.

BTW no one sets out to own the two biggest-circ magazines in a field. It happened because CBS bought a whole package of titles and Cycle just happened to be one of them. As part of that deal CBS also got Skiing Magazine, which was sold in '87 to Times Mirror, owner of SKI Magazine, as part of a package with Field & Stream, Home Mechanix and Yachting. I worked at SKI at the time and when the sales forces were combined the pressure to soft-pedal editorial became intense. Since there was no more real commercial competition, there was less incentive to do cutting-edge articles. I'm sure the same phenomenon happened at Cycle and Cycle World.

BTW the fourth "big" magazine (after Motorcyclist) was Cycle Guide, which folded in 1987.

Finally, I'll add that among general-interest magazines the surviving commercial titles (The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Scientific American etc) are edited for people who love to read and who will eat up a well-researched 10,000 word article (Harper's and The Atlantic are supported as charities and don't really count as commercial titles). The short-form titles (Life and Look for instance) died long ago -- TV killed them. Then the web killed the medium-format titles like Time and Newsweek. The long-form magazines survive because 1. no one wants to read 10,000 words on a screeen, and 2. no website wants to subsidize investigative reporting. Websites can steal that content from newspapers.

[bad Chad]

M/C is good, worth the price of subscription.

[Testarossa]

And there have always been a few smaller lowbrow titles -- SuperCycle, Big Iron etc. More or less equivalent to exploitation films.

[Cage Free]

What's the deal?  Save up to $67 on a 2 year subscription or Save up to 70%  on a 2 year subscription?  Both renewal cards fell out of my last copy. 

Always read the fine print, you may be asking for a refund that never shows up.

No refund for you Got my dear john letter from Motorcyclist today stating they are discontinuing publication and that the remainder (if any) issues will replaced by issues of cycle world. Wonder what they'll offer when cycle world does the dirt nap?

[sign216]

Most are agreeing that Motorcycle Classics is still a worthy mag.  Some disagreement about M. Consumer News.  On another forum people pointed to Iron + Air magazine.  I see it's published 4 times a year, 114 pages each, at $10/quarter ($10 each mag).  It seems a little rich, but if I want print to stay alive someone must pay for it.

Anyone try it?

https://ironandair.com/

[s1120]

Its been coming for a long time. I used to get all the mags... and most of the good car mags also, but really...  there is so much info out on the web, its hard to compete. The last 5 years or so the mags have been getting more, and more just fluff....  noting to hold you interested. Sad really...  I lived in the pages of bike, and car mags from my youth, on up. I learned a lot over those years.

Not bike related...  but if you want to see how good a magazine can still be...  Check out WoodenBoat.  A bench mark for what a good magazine can be.

[Two Checks]

Good Old Boat is another.