The Demise of Good Old Boat

[Filkee]

Looking for fellow fans and friends to mourn with. As much as this community is my true center, there was something about getting something on paper every few months that contained a good idea or some affection for an old piece of plastic that didn’t look like a Tylenol that offered me some sense of security. I guess it’s all on EYO now.

 

[Frank Langer]

I'm sorry to hear that!
There was lots to like about that.
Frank

 

[Filkee]

I'm sorry to hear that!
There was lots to like about that.
Frank

For current subscribers, they are going to make the archive available as pdf’s. So there’s that.

 

[Roger Janeway]

That is very sad. It was a lovely magazine to receive in paper format. I had been wondering how it was managing to survive and had just renewed my annual subscription 3 weeks before they sent this notice.

 

[KS Dave]

Wow - $500 to purchase a PDF download of all 155 issues?

Never got Good Old Boat (though considered it recently), but I do get the paper version of Practical Sailor. Always keep a few copies handy in the "library". That reminds me, I need to catchup my archive of Practical Sailor PDFs.

 

[alcodiesel]

GOB was the last paper magazine I subscribed to. My, how things have changed. Sorry to see it go.

 

[southofvictor]

Such a bummer

 

[Christian Williams]

I just heard a lecture from a dean at the Annenberg School of Communication here, on topic of reading. "More than half of Millennials get their primary news from TikTok. They spend the first half hour upon waking on TikTok." In his view (Fred Cook) they are just as informed as the older generation of paper newspapers, but the sourcing is different. Tik Tok and other sources are not as detailed as the NYT or as accurate , but when interested Millennial readers simply go to additional sources.

Oh, and magazines? The new generations "don't read any magazines at all."

 

[southofvictor]

I’ve found my own attention span for reading has been degraded quite a bit over the past decade. That’s my biggest concern about my own online news and media consumption. When it comes time to read a book (or even a long article) I find it hard to stay focused and engaged.

 

[Loren Beach]

Now that GOB is leaving us, I am still subscribing to only two (really good) print magazines. Practical Boat Owner and Yachting Monthly. Both from the UK.
Hard to believe that I used to read (on paper!) one design racing results from my class of boat in a magazine associated with the old USYRU. Results of Nationals articles that, a couple of times, I had submitted.
"Fame" turned out to be even shorter than "15 minutes."

While we have all gained some new communicative wonders from the rise of the 'net linking us together, much has been sacrificed, as well. As Chris points out, our attention span is not what it used to be...

 

[Bolo]

I just heard a lecture from a dean at the Annenberg School of Communication here, on topic of reading. "More than half of Millennials get their primary news from TikTok. They spend the first half hour upon waking on TikTok." In his view (Fred Cook) they are just as informed as the older generation of paper newspapers, but the sourcing is different. Tik Tok and other sources are not as detailed as the NYT or as accurate , but when interested Millennial readers simply go to additional sources.

Oh, and magazines? The new generations "don't read any magazines at all."

News in print form is just about dead. During most of my career as a freelance photographer shooting for magazines, newspapers, catalogs, annual reports and so on required that I delivered my film images in formats larger then 35mm, like medium format (2.5 inches square), 4 x 5 sheet film and even 8 x 10. Later, during the “digital revolution“, of which I was one of the first to offer digital image files in my area, the requirement was for high ISO (100) at 300 pixels per inch that was equivalent to and actually better than film quality. This also was because my images were still being used in print. As the internet came into more use and web sites flourished magazines, catalogs, annual reports, news, etc. all became more available online and there was no longer a need for high resolution digital images that needed high-end pro cameras to be produced. That’s because internet images don’t require 300 ppi but can get away with 72 ppi. So then mobile phone images taken by anyone without photographic training flooded the internet and eventually killed or at least severely damaged the commercial photography business. But my timing was just right because I retired just as that was happening. So, now most everything is digital and I’m OK with that because “progress“ is always going to be with us. It would be interesting to come back to this mortal life in 100 years and see what changes took place.

 

[toddster]

Good Grief. I downloaded the issue without reading the cover letter.

Every week, it seems there is a headline about this publication or that news organization folding. Glad I'm not in the business. But there is a sore lack of actual news or "content generation" these days. Just last week, I was trying to find some information, and though Google served-up a dozen beautifully designed web sites - all of the content was just copied and pasted from Wikipedia. In fact, the last few years that I taught college sophomores, many of them swore up and down that that was how they were taught to write in high school: copy and paste stuff from the web. Now "AI" is industrializing that process.

 

[Filkee]

EYO is really my favorite boat magazine.

 

[tenders]

Wow. I’ve been a GOB subscriber since 1999, I think, nearly - but not quite - its beginning. I’d assumed it had reached some kind of equilibrium as the traditional publishing industry collapsed in so many other places around it. I was traveling last week when the issue came out, and while I did download it and saw the Thistle article, I didn‘t read the cover email or the publisher’s letter at the beginning of the issue.

My wife has attempted to ride the bucking bronco of that industry as an editor and writer, and it’s been horrifying to watch so many publications’ survival strategies dissolve in the solvent of fast, free, low-quality, low-standard text often only masquerading as information. There is simply no money to be made in high quality. Newspaper and magazine-style content now exist only when underwritten by a wealthy dictator willing to run publications as vanity assets, usually at a loss. And there are lots of municipalities and topics - most, I’d say - that don’t have wealthy dictators willing to do that, regardless of bias, intent, or mission.

I also worry, as Christian pointed out recently, about the future of forum content in general. These too require benevolent dictators to administer, thankless tasks, that don’t come with the same ego boost that owning a newspaper does. The alternative to forums seems to be Reddit topics and Facebook groups, none of which have the high level of discourse and expertise we see here. I’ve tried, and abandoned, various Ericson, Atomic Four, and general Sailing groups and found the signal-to-noise ratio so low as to be useless.

I greatly value the quality and consistency of the individuals and advice here, and on Don Moyer’s A4 forum, and wish the best to the benevolent dictators and dedicated henchpeople behind them. Vive la Forum! And down with democracy, at least here!

 

[Loren Beach]

According to Wikipedia, GOB has/had approx 30K subscribers. One obvious solution, at least to me, is that they did not directly ask me and all the others to pay more on the grounds that they offer more actual value than any US alternative.

After all, I pay more per issue for my copies of Practical Boat Owner (from the UK) totally because it represents excellent value my dollar. By comparison I have been ignoring repeated solicitations to resubscribe to Sail or CW for the last couple of decades for about 12 to 15 bucks a year because their magazine was not even worth what little they wanted to charge me.

I wonder if part of the problem was that the new owners were ambivalent about keeping it going, and had a way out because they bought it on a down payment and a monthly payment plan, the way a lot of small businesses get sold. I know of other small businesses that sold and within a year or three the new owners closed and stopped payments to the founders. That said, it's always very hard to sell any small business when the value of the "good will" diminishes quickly after the founders leave...

I really did value GOB, to read and to re-read.

 

[Filkee]

According to Wikipedia, GOB has/had approx 30K subscribers. One obvious solution, at least to me, is that they did not directly ask me and all the others to pay more on the grounds that they offer more actual value than any US alternative.

After all, I pay more per issue for my copies of Practical Boat Owner (from the UK) totally because it represents excellent value my dollar. By comparison I have been ignoring repeated solicitations to resubscribe to Sail or CW for the last couple of decades for about 12 to 15 bucks a year because their magazine was not even worth what little they wanted to charge me.

I wonder if part of the problem was that the new owners were ambivalent about keeping it going, and had a way out because they bought it on a down payment and a monthly payment plan, the way a lot of small businesses get sold. I know of other small businesses that sold and within a year or three the new owners closed and stopped payments to the founders. That said, it's always very hard to sell any small business when the value of the "good will" diminishes quickly after the founders leave...

I really did value GOB, to read and to re-read.

I would have paid more. Well, my wife would have. A fine Christmas gift