Paper?

I just read Tim's column on "Magazine Economics." 

I honestly didn't know that there was a need for better paper.... is there something wrong with the current paper lol? I don't see this as an issue.

But as an average Joe who has been reading magazines since the early 80s, I can share a couple observations for what it might be worth. 

I fondly remember as a kid cutting a neighbor's grass every week and getting paid 6 bucks for it.  I would buy a Hot Rod magazine, a coke, and a candy bar and still have some money left over. 

As I got older I subscribed to countless magazines but by far everyone's favorite at our house was AutoWeek. Hands down. The car reviews were always excellent. Probably the best part of the reviews was also the thing that was the most simple. They showed a front view, side view and a rear view of each car and provided performance statistics in the simplest way possible. Period.  

Then the old man died and his kid took over and ruined it. He tried the whole rebranding nonsense and started trying to make it a "lifestyle" magazine with articles about ink pens licensed by Ferrari that you could buy for $2,500. Or bicycles with a Porsche logo for $10,000. I even think he started writing stories about cigars, wine and cheese lol. I once emailed him and told him he was alienating his core audience. He wrote back. I can't remember exactly what he wrote but I do remember he was condescending as hell. So I read in Tim's column that they fell by the wayside at some point recently. I honestly haven't thought about that publication in years. My response is this: Good. I'm glad. I was right and the so-called expert was not just wrong but spectacularly wrong.  That would not make me satisfied normally but in this case he made a point to not just ignore me but he went out of his way to tell me he was going to ignore me and to belittle me in the process. So I stopped buying his magazine.  It had nothing to do with the quality of the paper.

I also no longer subscribe to Motortrend, Car and Driver or any other magazine and haven't done so in years. Again, it has nothing to do with the quality of the paper lol. No, I stopped subscribing when these magazines let the weird photographers and graphic artists take over. All these magazines do the same thing... they publish blurry photographs to try to show a car is in motion. The blurrier the photo the faster the car is doncha know! Dumb. And they take extreme closeups of random parts on a car and act like its art. Do I really need to see a close-up of a lugnut??? If they're not doing that, they're publishing ridiculous charts and graphs that nobody asked for or wants.  At about the same time, everyone working for car magazines tried to become these literary geniuses who wrote poetry about everything BUT the car because David E. Davis told them there might be a Nobel prize in it for them some day for their automotive "literature."

It's not about the paper, the prose, the blurry pics, the lame attempts at artistry or goofy graphic design. 

It's about the cars.

Thank you for the kind words. To quote David, we always strive to put the reader first. If we're doing that well, a lot of the other pieces of the puzzle tend to fall into place.

In reply to plance1 :

Yes, thank you for the feedback (and the passion). Like you, we also grew up reading car magazines. For me, it was Hot Rod and my dad’s old Sports Car Graphics and R&T. I still have them all here at the house, too.