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Ask Slashdot: Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared from the landscape, I visited my local independent book store. In the basement I found a dazzling array of amazing magazines from the UK and Germany. Not only were the magazines impressive, they included CDs and DVDs of material. Nearly every subject was there: Knitting, Photography, Music, Linux, and Fitness. I snapped up a magazine called 'Computer Music,' which had a whole issue dedicated to making house music, including a disc of extra content. I subscribe to U.S. magazines like Wired, 2600, & Make, but their quality seems to ebb and flow from issue to issue and I don't ever recall a bonus disc. Are the UK magazines really better? If yes, why and which of them do you subscribe to? The other interesting thing about them is they weren't filled with tons of those annoying subscription cards. What is the best way to subscribe?"
EU Linux mags rock, especially the UK versions.
Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared from the landscape
You live in the US, don't you? Aren't you forgetting something?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Twenty years ago I was amazed at the quality of the UK magazines, in my case, Amiga computing & gaming rags, that came with floppy disks chocked full of stuff--barely a sector free. The value was far greater than what's available this side of the pond, and nothing has changed.
I do design work and find that most magazines especially if they pertain to computers are very nice. The paper is usually a very heavy stock glossy with a larger format. Also, there are a lot of detailed 'how to' articles with examples. The only real downside is that they seem at least 2 to 3 times as expensive and US counterparts, always on par price wise with a good paperback novel. I used to sit in the bookstore and drink coffee while reading those magazines but never buying. They were a good source of information, but they were IMHO too expensive to buy.
Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared from the landscape
What did Barnes & Noble close?
If you go to a Tech store that sells books, like MicroCenter, there are plenty of magazines covering a wide variety of subjects. Some of them have disks and others may have downloads.
Europeans live on an infrastructure that supports pedestrian life. So, there's more likelihood for walking past magazine stands and making those impulse buys. The only time I ever see magazines is if I happen to pass by that aisle in the grocery store. And, some mags I admit I *would* buy on an impulse if I were exposed to them more often even though they're not topical enough for me to google for. For example, tonight was was in the grocery store and passed an aisle while waiting for my GF. I was thumbing through the guns and hunting mags and given a few more minutes I might have picked one up.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Here in Australia, we get American and English magazines equally. I hardly ever burn ISO's for Linux, but rather buy a magazine every few months and so have good-quality boot/install/recover disks around all the time. The articles aren't bad -- I've learned about some cool apps there -- but I buy the mags for the disks mainly. And they're all UK magazines, now that I think about it. This presumably goes back to when Amigas and C64s were hip; there were always gaming magazines with playable demo disks.
Everything is better in europe.
Their healthcare, their food, their government, their women, their cars, their tv, their bathrooms, their internet.
I heard they all have supercomputers for their desktops but aren't allowed to tell us americans cus we'll be too embarrassed.
You should see the magazines from Japan (especially the car magazines).
A lot of the UK special interest magazines are by Future Publishing. A company with roots back to 8-bit magazines like Zzap64 and Crash. I think they're partly responsible for raising the game in the UK market.
Let's remember that in recent years there's a veritable cross-Atlantic shuttle of magazine staffers. After all, Time Out New York is an offshoot of a London company and was first built with staff from the European offices. Tina Brown continues to be a powerhouse on both sides and, of course, the Murdoch people get swapped back and forth like third string baseball players. And within the large production complexes, the editions of magazines like Time for dozens of different markets are mostly repackaged versions of the same pool of content.
That being the case, maybe the biggest question becomes what makes these media companies decide to sell Americans such a thin gruel of content out of the rich banquet of editorial that they have to choose from.
You want things to improve? Break Diamond and Ingram distribution, encourage businesses to buy targeted display ads in small magazines that appeal their precise demographics, and help independently owned bookstores to make a profit on magazines and small press creations.
I've typically found the CDs/DVDs to be full of trialware -- usually older versions than what's available from the usual download sources. And the editorial content is quite amateurish.
This is for hobbyist magazines (PCs, cars, etc.). Can't vouch for whatever might pass for the equivalent of Atlantic Monthly, etc.
Funny you should use Computer music as an example. I collected that magazine before I had kids, but by the time it reaches Japan it's 2,600 yen($34)...I love the sample collections but I cannot justify 34 bucks for a magazine. Very little dead tree media for me(space is a premium in Japan).
Easiest way to order is to go the publishers web page. Most of these magazines have different prices for different regions, but it's nothing that credit card cannot handle. I have been ordering Edge by Future Publishing, by far the best gaming magazine I have seen so far.
I got Internet, flipboard, zite, and pulse. I don't see why a sane person should spend money on paper. If you really have to, buy an iPad, if you buy lot of magazines you will end up saving both money and trees
I typically read the uk magazine retrogamer, and when they decided to stop
Including the disc, the editorial mentioned that the primary reason for the disk is to raise the cover price. However, downloads over broadband have made such discs increasingly irrelevant, and thus they decided to stop making it
For those of you who are curious but impatient, might I recommend this handy little overview of the economics of one of the signature failed magazine ventures of recent years: http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Media-Critical-Magazine-ebook/dp/product-description/B003PJ7JYS
New Scientist is possibly the best popular science magazine available. Scientific American is pretty good too, but doesn't have the same coverage because it's monthly, while NS is weekly.
If you have any interest in politics or world affairs: The Economist. Most news these days is like candyfloss; by comparison, the Economist is like a huge, succulent steak. Don't be fooled by its thinness: it's the only magazine I've ever come across where I actually want to read 90% or more of the articles in each and every issue. There's just a lot less of the fluff, filler, and advertising which pads out many thicker magazines.
I once read somewhere "c't is a magazine worth learning german for".
c't is a technology magazine somewhere between casual and pro, and deals with gadgets, computers and their peripherals, mobile phones and more. It reviews the quality of service of hardware vendors, ISPs and such, reports on wage situations in the IT-field and the occasional game. Being very broad in content, they still manage to go indepth (?) if questions arise via reader feedback. I have yet to find a publication in that field that matches the quality of research, writing and running this fine line of easy consumable content without being shallow.
Also they used to have the most hilarious April fools articles.
They have a sister magazine called IX, which focuses on linux and security. It's outside my competence field, so i can't say much about it, but it seems it's quite good, regarding to my linux-loving peers.
What about if you have a subscription?
Most US magazines are 1/4 of the price if you subscribe. Is it any cheaper to read these expensive UK magazines if you subscribe?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The best thing about European newspaper stands is that they often display magazines which feature topless women on the cover.
It's really nice to be able to look to your right as you walk down the street and see multiple nice pairs of tits on display like tennis shoes.
Of course that's got nothing on the red light district in Amsterdam, but I can see I'm getting off topic...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
HI! I live in Europe and I buy US magazines online. For example, I'm a RC helicopter fan and until about 2 years ago, there was no French magazine dedicated to this. RC mags mostly talked about RC planes and only a few pages were about helicopters, while in the US there were mags 100% dedicated to RC helis. Now there are RC heli only french magazines, but that's something quite new.
As for Linux mags, I really found great to have CDs bundled with the mags so I didn't have to download ISOs and burn CDs before ADSL existed. Now I find it better to grab the latest version of the distros online and burn it. I think the bundled CD/DVD are not so useful now.
(Except biscuit flour.)
</discussion>
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Yes, we can.
http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm
What about the official My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic magazine?
Speaking as a print publisher who's sick of your kind of parasitism, bugger off.
How is it parasitism if he uses online sources that are made available for everyone?
Print publishers need to accept the online world as a reality and stop seeing it as unfair competition.
Basically the same lesson that the music and film industries had/have to learn.
Well, in Europe, most people can read and write. Consequently books and magazines are more popular and can cater to a more advanced demographic.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
EU has many more languages with a printing tradition than the US. Essentially USA is English with some influx from the myriad of minorities. EU has more than 30+ languages, each with a long and unique printing tradition. Because of the cultural diversity, and the slower pace with which ideas transfer cross the language barrier there is a greater diversity than in the printed monoculture of the US. Spanish Latin America is somewhat similar, yet more diverse than the US due to the fact that these are sovereign nations.
Still, this doesn't mean that UK magazines more readily borrows from the rest of Europe than American magazines do. So, I believe the number of EU languages has little to do with this, thinking of it again... :) [I didn't want to delete what I had just written, it _sounded_ nice...]
In fact, it has been my impression that American magazines have way more ads (sorry, way way more ads) but more readable content because the larger number of subscribers. Some monthly magazines have like 200+ pages, with perhaps 50% ads, which very few EU magazines have.
The reason is probably that the number of pan-US publishers has gone down, because of market forces. Dog-eat-dog. The headline "Because of the cultural diversity?" probably is misleading in one sense, but the governments in the EU tend to defend the small publishers using e.g. tax reductions, just to retain that headline cultural diversity, after all.
the last time I used a CD or DVD that I hadn't burned myself.
I mainly read magazines while in the loo and I'm too worried about getting my phone full of germs.
don't worry, most north americans wouldn't be able to find it on a map.
They not only have better magazines, they have better weapons in general.
For example the FN P90 has 50 rounds in its magazine, and its out of the way on the stock.
Say is Israel included in this definition of Europe? The Tavor is a very nice assault rifle.
This may be the response to the emergence of web journalism (now about 15 years in). U.S. magazines decided to invest less in good authors and experts as they feared their circulation would drop, and it did because they in fact did not attract the best staff.
Newspapers certainly completely threw in the towel in the U.S. following the advent of the WWW, RSS, portals, etcetera.
Perhaps in Europe, journalistic entities instead maintained standards, kept hiring good writers and experts, and started looking for real methods to retain customers. The CD/DVDs you mention are a great example. In the U.S. we have decided quite clearly to disenfranchise those without high speed, persistent internet access. In Europe, it is much more widely acknowledged that internet access is not ubiquitous among the people due to cost, despite many regions having vastly better coverage, lower cost, and higher speeds than offered in the U.S. Add to this the frequency of metered internet service in Europe, and a DVD of media obtains tangible value added as a replacement for downloads.
I subscribe to a SF&F art and illustration magazine called Imagine FX, and I pay through the nose for it. And to be honest, I might pay even more if I had to, there just isn't anything published in the US that is even close...
Yes!
N/T
Really.
A better question would be: who cares? Magazines are a waste of paper and I haven't seen a good one anyway since 1996. The Internet has made magazines irrelevant more so than any other print medium, with the possible exception of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
There are plenty of magazines out there, and not all the bookstores have closed.
Are you living under a rock?
Well, I'm from Germany and can only describe the situation here, but "bonus" discs really are pretty standard for a long time now. Especially with computer and gaming magazines, although some have abandoned them for online content.
For example, Linux magazines often provide a disc with the software that is reported about in the magazine, and often they're also bootable (rescue systems, latest Debian, whatever) which comes in very handy in case you're system broke down and thus can't get online (happened to me once a few years ago). Other computer magazines' discs have demos, free software and drivers but I've also seen them provide movies (I have no idea why). Luckily the notorious AOL discs have vanished ;-) A noteworthy example of a really useful bonus disc is from the popular computer magazine c't: about once a year it provides Knoppicilin, now called Desinfec't which is a Linux Live-CD with content to fix your Windows system: it comes with a few virus scanners (latest version: the commercial scanners Avira, BitDefender, Kaspersky and the free ClamAV) and always support reading and writing NTFS partitions.
Gaming magazines also put these discs to good use as some of them put video reviews of games on their discs and that really is useful additional content as often two or three screenshots printed in a magazine just can't transport the experience of a game. Of course the PC targeted magazines also have game demos.
they would be The Economist and ... oh, wait.
Now that all the large chain book stores have disappeared
You think that's good? Wait until the large record labels have disappeared!
I knew Euros were backwards, but wow! Hey Euros - it's the 21st century. Even my grandmother uses a tablet.
The result is that you can still make good money running magazines. This is perhaps a factor in why Scientific American and National Geographic are now, in fact, British owned.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Funny story.
I bought a UK magazine with a lite version of dictation software on its CD (in California), but after installing it I discovered it expected me to speak with a British accent!
While we're commenting on quality I just love how non-US magazines actually give you the complete artictle from start to finish. What's with this? "You've read 3 pages, now skip to page 43 to read the last bit while we give you 4 pages of shiny adverts then a completely different article without you properly noticing".
I buy periodicals for music production, motorcycle enthusiasts, and photography, and in all 3 cases, the UK periodicals are light years better than the american publications. The DVDs are basically a gimmick - they tend to be loaded with freebies and demo software available elsewhere online and once you've dug into a few of them, you find they are less than useful, but the content of the magazines themselves is far superior. More interesting articles with unique viewpoints that actually serve to differentiate between the different magazines of the same genre - unlike american periodicals which all tend to be nearly identical within a particular genre and which are rarely more than collections of advertiser press releases. UK music magazines actually tear down hit records and do analysis on the production, document the process of improving studio construction in private studios, and take you step by step through mixing songs. Their US equivalents have press release based product reviews and editorials that require little to no journalistic skill or integrity to put together. The same is true of the bike mags. UK mags have stories about tours through Europe in difficult conditions, real racing coverage, and stories documenting custom builds of real bikes. US mags are again a collection of press release product reviews and editorial content that offers nothing.
It has seemed to me that the US periodical publishing industry realized a long time ago that most of their readers don't actually care about quality and decided that they needn't bother, either, since they can get 85% of the ad revenue from 25% of the effort. I put it down to a much greater reliance on advertiser money than the UK mags, which all seem to have much higher retail and subscription prices than the $8-$20/year pricing of many US periodicals - even when looking at the UK (non-import) pricing printed on the cover. It is clear that UK publishers are still mostly selling content to consumers, while US publishers are selling consumers to advertisers. Little surprise, then, that the quality of the content varies so enormously between the two philosophies. It's about the difference between the content on HBO/Showtime and the broadcast networks. one is selling entertainment. The other is selling consumers - and frankly, dumb consumers probably pay more for crappier products so it is actually to their advantage to program for the lowest common denominator consumer.
What about National Geographic? That's a top US mag and we get it in Europe too - even translated. As for magazines I buy, T3 magazine is my favorite but there are far too many adverts in it. It's also pretty expensive IMO.
The quality of European magazines has been declining slowly through the years though. For example Elektor went down the swanny about 5 years ago as it's only stupid microcontroller projects these days. And don't get me started on the HAM magazines that all assume pre-made equipment instead of do it yourself like they used to. So yeah, any good suggestions are welcome.
Thank you for your comment, Slashdot reader from 1995.
If you thought Computer Music was good, try Sound On Sound http://www.soundonsound.com/ The website also has all the articles and content from all the issues since 1985. The latest few months are always only available to subscribers (you get a username and pass for the site when subscribing) and afterwards they;re open to all. They also have amazing forums on the site.
We come in peace... We leave in pieces...
This was doing the rounds a few weeks back.
Greek mags and papers are the way to go.
My first hand experience is that German magazines are way better in quality, quantity and content. Even the paper and print quality is better. What passes for a magazine in the US (hefty price and all) you couln't hand out as a freebee here. For instance, the Time magazine feels like those cheap flimsy pamphlets the Jehovas Witnesses hand out - and is costs more than 'Der Spiegel' or simular magazines.
Computer Mags are all way better. I think it's safe to say that the 'CT' is the best computer related magazine on the planet and even US specialist publications such as PHP Architect don't come anywhere near the german 'PHP Magazin'.
So, to answer your question in a nutshell: Yes, at least german magazines are way better than US magazines.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
well, I stumbled accross a US edition of the Sun newspaper - anyone how lives in the UK will be familiar with the 'page 3 lovelies'. Being in the sexually repressed USA I had to see how they handled it. Thinking that I'd see blacked out nipples (it's only topless nudity not full frontal) or maybe a 'lovely' in sexy bra.
Nope.
They couldn't even cope with that. Just a page full of err ... journalism (or what passes for it in the Sun).
Still it did make me chuckle to the bemusement of my American friends.
I used to buy the computer mags for Amiga, Atari St, even as far back as BBC micro. It's certainly how I got my first copies of Bryce, Poser, etc. And faster than typing programmes in on the BBC ! Now I just subscribe to New Scientist. I might buy the occasional photography magazine if the cover grabs my attention. Most of what I want to read now is free and online but in the summer there's nothing better than sitting outside with a magazine. I have no idea what US magazines are like for comparison.
Pro Coffee Drinker
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/25/1039957/-STUNNING:-Comparing-US-World-Covers-for-TIME-Magazine ... need to say anything more?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Just look at cars, food, "democracy". You guys don't have a clue about quality, magazines are nothing different. I wouldn't even consider subscribing to an American Magazine.
Computer Music is one of the WORST magazines in the U.K. You must really have it bad in the U.S.
It's written by a bunch of arrogant tossers who know nothing about music, and every single month they try to sell you the latest, 'best' VST or piece of music software that you don't need. Every year a new generation of gullible youngsters buy the magazine and it's their first introduction to computer music, and then they go on to buy software they don't need, defend it to the hilt on forums if it's criticised, and then encourage other people to also buy the same shit.
(Not saying all computer music software is shit, just a lot of it is sold because of HYPE and stupidity, nothing else.)
There's a middle-class tradition of subscribing to Private Eye, partly because in the 70s and 80s it was slightly harder to get over the counter due to WH Smith's refusal to handle distribution, and partly because they make it insanely cheap to do so because they need the cashflow. If you want The New Yorker or US Wired or something, again you get a subscription because, even airmail, it's half the price of buying it over the counter (I subscribed to US Wired from 1.2 until it became a life-style magazine, and I've subscribed to The New Yorker for fifteen years or more), and the same applies to things like Time. But for UK-published general interest magazines, it's usually bought at a newsagent or delivered by a newsagent. "Trade" publications, for which a lot of the readership will either get it free or have it paid for by their employer, are done by post, but that's a rather different market.
So that's why there's no subscription cards (or very few). They'll sell you a subscription if you want, but it'll normally cost you twelve times the cover price. They might throw in a small discount or a gift, and you're probably getting the postage for free, but it's lot like US publications where even an international airmail subscription is about half the cover price. You might opt for a subscription if you live in the sticks where there's no handy newsagent, or as a way of giving a gift at Christmas, or if the magazine you want doesn't have proper distribution. But in general, you don't. That we have as a household three magazines on subscription, and have had as many as six, is extremely unusual in urban England.
Retro Gamer, Games TM and Edge magazine are all second to none in their covering of retro and contemporary gaming. Edge is mainly contemporary while Gamse TM has a monthly retro section and of course Retro Gamer goes back to from the late 70's/early 80's up to the last gen (currently GC/PS2/Dreamcast etc.). All well worth reading (and the quality of the magazines in themselves themselves is pretty good too), and all offer US and worldwide subs at good rates.
are more plentiful, come in stainless steel, nickel-plate, armored plastic, and have capacities up to 100 rounds!
a much better situation for the citizenry, as politicians prefer unarmed peasants!
I live in the UK and read Linux Format and the Linux Magazine. Future publishing also do a Mac format and loads on windows obviously
I strongly disagree with the "women" part. But otherwise...
There is British food? Besides boiled boar with mint sauce? http://www.asterix.com/books/albums/asterix-in-britain.html
"If you have any interest in politics or world affairs: The Economist. Most news these days is like candyfloss; by comparison, the Economist is like a huge, succulent steak." It was buddy. It was. When I was a student I had a subscription and it was a great magazine. Things started to change imho when they started to use colored graphics. Today it has a lot of garbage. From a former free market magazine they have come to "the government should intervene here", "The government should give incentives there", yade yade yade. I rarely browse it today if I see it in a store. But I have read interesting articles in "The Atlantic", "Foreign Policy", "Rolling Stone" etc. I actually never thought that Germany had something comparable. So I was very amazed that the "Wirtschaftswoche" has actually some "beef" insinde. But "The Economist"? Ach Du lieber...
First, if you're interested in magazines, find a good newspaper/magazine shop, as bookstores — even those with seemingly largish "magazine sections" — can't compare in terms of either selection or knowledge.
As far as subscribing to foreign magazines, have you tried contacting the publisher? If they can't help you, then you're unlikely to find a significantly better price than the news shop.
With few exceptions, widely distributed US technology magazines tend to be very "advertiser friendly," and, consequently, even non-review feature articles in US technology magazines tend to be overwhelmingly "slanted" towards tools and technologies over, e.g., techniques and non-product-related news. As this has basically turned me off the genre, it's nice to hear that the situation might be better elsewhere.
Even outside technology, there seems to be a similar negative correlation between "commercialism" and quality in the magazine industry. Off the top of my head, examples of generally interesting and "not unabashedly commercial" magazines include Harpers , Foreign Affairs , and the Skeptical Inquirer .
For Technology people. Really good. From programming to hardware. What was the death of it were two things: 1. More Focus on the average user 2. The migration from computers to Phones, TV, Entertainment. They just tried to cover too much and too much just on the surface. I had a subscription since I was 17. Long time ago. But now? Also let's face it; The time of magazines is dead. Today you follow blogs or you google if you have a problem. What was even better were the, now long defunct magazines "Pascal" and "mc".
As the original poster mentioned an interest in music production, Sound on Sound is the definitive music production magazine in the UK, and it offers a digital subscription for overseas readers.
If you want a feel for the content, a lot of their older articles are available online, try this one on the making of Bohemian Rhapsody
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
A.) Not all magazines are also available online in any form at all, as this recent article points out. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-newspaper-that-said-up-yours-to-the-internet-2012-01-20
B.) Even the ones that are sometimes have different content in dead tree and online editions.
C.) Speaking as a print publisher who's sick of your kind of parasitism, bugger off.
I don't normally respond to -1 posts (this post is not offensive, it's just strongly-worded) but your example is pretty special. Private Eye occupies a unique place in UK publishing.
Sounds like you need to look at a way of making money from online content. I suggestion online subscriptions and do it properly with an easy-to-use website.
Are European Magazines better?
Yes. Primarily because of the standard of cultural literacy they can expect from their readers. Consider Prospect, Der Speigel, The Economist, or The London Review of Books. Because of the woeful levels in the US, even the best [magazines] fall with a dull thud. Nothing that a couple of thousand years won't put right, so cheer up.
Well, you are correct, IF you don't consider the US army base on Cuba as US soil, then you are correct.
And EU Muslims are just US blacks. During WW2 Brits refused to follow US army practices of discriminating against blacks, like for instance in Pubs by refusing to segregate them. The brits of the middle of the century as defenders of equal rights? HA! No, just that blacks were not on their hate list at the moment OR rather more accurate, American blacks.
And a Muslim complaining about racism? There is not a muslim country in the world that is not racist and puts severe restrictions on everyone else if they got a chance, for the latest example see Nigeria, everyone not muslim must leave the north.
A muslims complaing about racism in the world. Laughable.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In the UK, we have loads of magazines. 95% crap, but a good 5%. Should you come across a UK magazine outside of the UK, then it's likely to come from the 5%.
Feel free to enjoy it, but don't imagine it's representative of the quality of UK magazines as a whole.
Should you wish to buy then, it's usually easy enough to subscribe (http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/gaming/edge-magazine-subscription/) will let you take out a subscription to Edge.
Maybe of note is that I think the quality of many UK magazines is falling. High point in the late 90's, early 00's, but seems to be sliding. Possibly just the market sorting itself out though. Magazines that will survive are those with great big in-depth, well written articles. The more fragmented/thrown-together ones I, quite rightly, been lost to the online world.
US magazines a long time ago: constantly getting thinner in content and full of advertisement. I mean, I'm not against ads but there's a limit :-\
Good for you. I prefer dead tree books, I also eat dead cow meat on a dead tree table and consume regularly a lot of other dead things.
I just want to know why it took the submitter so long to enter an independent bookstore? Chain stores are full of the same franchise books and terrible mass produced junk, it's the equivalent of McDonalds for the mind.
Most of my favorite magazines are British. I long ago stopped bothering with Time and Newsweek, which have been dumbed-down to complete irrelevance, but The Economist is still a great magazine. I'm a car and motorsports enthusiast and love Motor Sport, Autosport, Car, and Evo, too. The quality of writing and photography far outstrips most US magazines.
First, most people here do not life in the USA and several European countries. Then the subject is very wide. And finally what is better? You could evaluate the quality of journalism. Or the quality of the production or the selection of topics. And just because a lot of magazines migrate to applets does not mean that there are less of those magazins. Furthermore, many topics of magazines became obsolete, as the communities they lifed of and they supported moved on and are now selforganized in some way via the net.
There is this thing called the "Internet" that allows you to download content so you don't have to use physical media. I'm surprised that magazines still include them, and that so many posts here on /. seem to think magazines are better when they include DVDs.
YES! We don't get CHiP in the states
It’s a reversal of fortune, when I was a kid the American magazines I saw in the UK were really exciting but when I visited America for the first time last Spring we couldn’t find a book shop anywhere, it even took up 3 days before we found a filling station with a road atlas on the shelf. Your loosing skills guys.
Not sure if Future Music is making a US version anymore, but they did for a while and it sucked. Future Music UK & Computer Music UK are 2 of my favorite magazines next to Sound on Sound - and all 3 are UK publications. The articles are better than their US counterparts (Keyboard, Electronic Musician) and the tutorials are pretty handy. I now subscribe via iPad, which has a bunch of cons (can't read on my computer, can't back up to my computer, files deleted at random from my iPad) but the main pro is I don't have to live like an old man with stacks of old magazines cluttering up my apartment.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
When you travel around Europe you notice that (in the cities at least) there are a huge number of magazine stands everywhere. In addition to selling an impressive amount of porn and gossip mags, these newsstands sell magazines on every subject imaginable.
I think that we need to separate the magazines into categories. Are we talking about computer mags, porn, lifestyle, cartoons, or what? I can give some insight on some of them. My personal opinion is that computer magazines in Germany are "more insightful" than those in the US. For instance, many magazines in the US contain information that are available online. Magazines like the German C't are really pioneer in the sense that they contain *new* information, written in a professional way and well researched. When it comes to a job interview, if you say that you've written an article on C't, that gives you extra points. Not like Nature or Science, but it does bring some reputation.
On the other hand, magazines in the musical field are, in my opinion, better in the US. For instance the US Magazine "Keyboard" is really good. I'm not sure if there is a Rolling Stone's equivalent in Germany, but these magazines have definitely renown names and to me anything similar is just a copy.
You have many Linux magazines in Europe. They are ok, but nothing that you couldn't find online. Buying them saves you a lot of research time, but they are not really innovative. Other magazines are quite local and it is impossible to compare. These include business, cars, or lifestyle magazines.
I would say that with online availability of magazines, any magazine that survives is either laundrying money or has a reader-base. And as long as some people enjoy readying them, and you are not obliged to subsidize them with taxes like you do with BBC in UK or ZDF in Germany, then we cannot really talk about better or worse. Just buy what you like, and enjoy the read.
Whuts a magazine?
that especially British magazines have a sense of humour. I've come a CD review of the editor's favourite artist that had a rating of "five stars, because I'm the editor and I can do whatever I want".
Racecar Engineering blows the socks off any US based car magazine. The American magazines talk broadly about vehicles to consumers but provide very little for car nuts. Racecar Engineering is the only magazine that delves into the actual science behind the vehicles
For details of subscriptions, have a look at:
http://www.subscription.co.uk/
http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/
https://www.circules.com/
http://www.isubscribe.co.uk/ (although their site doesn't appear to load if you're using IPv6)
Outside of the UK though, they're not cheap!
Personally, I subscribe to the UK edition of Wired (even SWMBO likes it, which is saying something) and Private Eye (http://www.private-eye.co.uk/) as well as some camping/caravanning mags (yes, I'm an old fart with a family now). I used to get Computer Shopper (www.computershopper.co.uk) and PC Pro (www.pcpro.co.uk) but realised that by the time I'd received the magazine, I'd already read about the stories/reviews on-line two weeks before the magazine landed on my mat.
In my experience, cover disks are full of crapware and old versions of software (on the basis that you'll use that and then pay to upgrade to the latest version) - they always went straight in the bin.
They have vast numbers of them on every subject from how to choose what type of cat to have as a pet to FPGA programming. In fact there is probably one about teaching your cat to program FPGAs.
Charlie Stross totally needs to write a short story about this concept.
"O HAI. IM IN UR SILICON RECONFIGURING UR GATES."
Oh noes! Mah buggy whips are becoming irrelevant! What shall I do?
Two words for you: sex shops.
For the AK 47, Europeans have better magazines. All my US made AK 47 mags suck or are over priced. And the South Korean ones are ok, but a bit cheap. Give me European mags any day. Oh. Wrong magazine. Sorry.
I bought a UK copy of PC Gamer recently when I heard they had a preview of Overgrowth in it. I was surprised to know that they'd have different content fro the US PC Gamer magazine, but I was shocked to find the entire magazine was bigger (like those old Life magazines in my grandparent's basement), longer, had many more features, and had a bonus disk. The US version looked positively emaciated next to it.
Demented But Determined.
When you travel to the US it's appalling the number of magazines you can find at news stands. Ranging from astronomy, tatooing, or chili aficionados. However the business model seems to make the important content very light but heavy in advertising. There are some good magazines though like Time, National Geographic, etc.. I'm subscribed to them and Cinefex, a magazine oriented to movie effects. For years this magazine didn't featured any kind of distracting graphics in its front page, just a frame of the featured movie, the magazine's name, price, issue number and date, nothing more.
In a nutshell, IMO you have both very good and bad magazines.
I work in a chain (smaller, as chains go) bookstore, and for quite a while we've be stocking a lot of UK magazines. They tend to seem higher quality, though I don't really read magazines much. Our stock is probably as high as 20-30% UK magazines.
Because of how you probably look for magazines.
If America doesn't have a magazine on some subject, you then have to look for it for other sources, and you may find a European magazine.
But if America does have the magazine and Europe doesn't, the magazine is already available. If it's available, you have no need to go looking for alternative sources, and since you're not looking, you'd never notice that Europe doesn't have it.
So you notice situations where Europe is better, but not where Europe is worse. Overall it gives an inflated impression of Europe.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601111205,00.html
-- QED
I agree with the premise if this article (but I agree that B+N is still going strong.) If you look for linux, photography (especially), gaming and other topics the UK mags tend, in my opinion, to be better than US mags. For example I was looking for a photography mag and the one I ended up getting is N-Photo which is UK based.......to buy the paper version in the US is quite pricey...I liked N-Photo (very practical substantive articles) so much I ended up ordering it on zinio which is significantly cheaper. While you can't obviously get the disk this way, they provide a private link to watch the material that is on the DVD (if there are sample programs, etc they can probably be provided on line as well.) I can read it with no problems on my tablet. Furthermore, no adding to clutter. With the advent of tablets and services such as zinio the European mags will become more accessible to NA readers
I'm a miget!
Have gnu, will travel.
Personally, i always preferred the US-mag Dr. Dobbs and still think it's one of the best around. As for bonus disks, i always hesitate, since I hate to install unknown software on my systems.
Computer Music, Digital Camera (Future, via MyFavouriteMagazines.co.uk), Sound on Sound (though not currently) via their website, Linux Magazine (not current) via ads in their magazine, Amateur Photographer (via their website). Currently trying to kick my sub habit, or at least get it under control. That said, I am UK based, so I'm not sure what its like subscribing to UK magazines from overseas.
-- The Grand Teddy Bear has Spoken: "Windows 8 Source Code Available NOW! more disgusting than your pr..."
Yes
"mushy peas"
Where else will you find a can with that as the title in a market besides Brittian?
When I was a freshman in college I discovered Der Spiegel in the stacks of the school library. I had taken German in high school and was minimally competent. I was blown away at the depth of the coverage, the breadth of the subjects covered, and the perspectives in the coverage. It was a revelation, and it was a big step in my education about American media. Here in the US, ALL our news coverage is written from an extremely narrow band of the political spectrum of ideas (Republican to Democrat), and an even narrower band of the economic spectrum of ideas (the so called Western Consensus). As far as our media is concerned anything to the left of conservative democrats is socialist/communist and anything to the right of Republicans is simply not discussed. So at least on the news front, magazines from Europe are better.
-- QED
......is there any magazine similar to OMNI out there?*
*( I mean old/middle ages OMNI, not the fluffy alien/psychic stuff they put out in the last couple years it was printing )
This is true, but only when you drive large and dangerous US cars down them.
I mean - I once saw a Chrysler 300 head-to-head with a tractor down a country lane. I think the tractor driver felt intimidated.....
Er, I'm looking at a magazine rack right now and I see at least 10 US computer magazines that include discs of demos and other content...most are game magazines, perhaps 3/4 of them.
Most of them also offer disk-less versions, because (from my PoV) I don't want spend $10 on (magazine+shovelware) when I can get the same magazine for $6 and download what I want later.
Could have everything to do with US consumer habits - rather than accept the shovelware handed to us, we'd rather fetch what we want, perhaps US consumers are more adept at that.
Could be (as is the point of so many comments) that Europe is just awesomer.
But frankly I like lots of places in the world, and tend to try to avoid qualitative judgments like this.
-Styopa
The "cheap crap" is offset (I think) by the fact that Americans (have historically) bought bigger houses, and more land to put them on, than anyone else on the planet.
Most magazine articles nowadays give you a URL you can type into your browser to get any additional content. Some of them include a QR code for those too lazy to type in the URL themselves.
All of this is much, much better than the 1980s, when the computer magazines had code listings (in BASIC, Pascal, Logo, or even assembly!) printed out. You had to type it all in by hand (no OCR back then), and hope you didn't make a typo which would hang the computer. And we liked it!
These days magazines are challenged to exist regardless of quality. There has been an inability to hold price levels and the readership has gone eslewhere. When the better, more specialized mags were a dollar or two they had an audience. But now we see publications of the better type fro six to sixteen dollars per issue and as a consequence they do not sell enough copies to justify shelf space in a store.
In 1982 when you went into a convenience store the item directly in front of you before all else was the magazine rack. Now those smae stores don't even have a magazine rack.
This is actually a repeat from another era. In 1915 the big item on the front racks of stores was sheet music. As Tin Pan Alley died and people turned to the radio instead of the family to make music sheet music faded into oblivion as a mass merchandise product.
I susuepct we are progressing to the rear.
What are magazines?
A bit off topic here, but I think there's some similarities between the European magazines and the Japanese magazines - the Mac magazines in particular. I read 'MacPeople' once in a while, and there's usually a CD/DVD with featured software included. At the same time it feels like 'MacPeople' has a mission to provide a lot of app reviews, general interest interviews with celebrities, and hints/tips. The page format is also quite dense; there's a a lot of graphics and small text.
'MacPeople' also weighs in at about 200 pages per issue, costing 730 yen. The recent increase in the yen's value makes it a bit more pricey to buy in terms of dollars.
There's actually another Japanese Mac magazine, and a Linux/Unix magazine, but unfortunately I don't go to the Japanese bookstore that often so I don't see those magazines that often.
A bit off topic, but I thought it was interesting.
Not entirely relevant to Slashdot, but one of the best magazines in the world is Alpinist. It's American, but with global relevance (to climbers and mountaineers anyway), and is easy to get hold of in the UK. I get given a subscription as a gift every year, and it makes me wish that every specialist magazine was as good. Every edition is a work of art.
I haven't seen a tech magazine anywhere near that good. Wired occasionally comes close, but its design is often obtrusive and ugly.
Magazines in Europe are also a shitload more expensive. Cover prices are usually higher than in the U.S. for everything, and unlike in the U.S. subscriptions only offer a small discount. Here in Germany Der Spiegel is €4 ($5.33) per issue, but if you get an annual subscription it's only €197.50: €3.80/issue. On the other hand, in the US, the similar New Yorker is $5.99/issue, and a one-year subscription is $70: $1.5/issue. And if you subscribe through an association or something like that, you can actually get it for less than $1/issue.
So, I guess my point is, you get what you pay for.
I live in Brazil, and for most subjects the best magazines are the imported ones. We (me and my husband) buy around 4-6 each month, because the prices by the time they get to our hands are really absurd, and the specialized stores only get a few of each. Usually, the american ones are best for computing subjects, although we like UK's better for 3D designing. And UK's SFX totally rocks for Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but we had to subscribe to get a manageable price and not loose a few editions.
The price and distribution definitelly counts, everything that needs to be imported is obviously more expensive - and from UE is usually twice the price that from US. So even though I love the feel of paper, I'm all for subscribing to online content, it could really make this all be about quality above everything else.
So if you consider that European, then the answer is yes.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The Barnes & Noble near me, in East Lansing, MI is actually CLOSED...went out of business. And I'm not sure how...it's directly across from Michigan State University and there are few, if any, other book stores nearby (Schuster Books is somewhat close but not University distance).
All of the Borders are gone but they have been for quite a while...
If you're seeing a Magazine from overseas, it has to be better than average. They will need people to buy them with the added costs.
If you're in the country of origin, you'll find plenty of magazines of poor to average quality.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
There are lots of good magazines on the newsstands. But there are lots of good magazines in the US as well, though increasingly online (and, of course, many have been replaced by news sites and blogs).
The reason you see more in newsstands is that Europe has been slow to go to digital publications. One of the reasons for that is that the publishing industry is subsidized in various ways through fees and taxes in Europe. I don't think it's a good system.
Silicon Chip magazine is excellent on analogue electronics, very good on digital electronics, but only fair on computer topics. Given that it is effectively descended from ETI and friends, that is perhaps not a surprise.
But it is better than most (all?) other electronics magazines around the world.
The words you are looking for are Black. And also Mexican. Crime in the US is almost exclusively by Black people, and Mexicans. In NYC in 2009, Blacks accounted for 80% of all shootings in NYC in the first half of 2009. Blacks and Hispanics accounted for 98% of all shootings. Blacks committed 70% of all robberies. Whites committed 5% of all violent crimes, and 1.8% of all shootings, and less than 5% of all robberies. Whites are 35% of the City, and Blacks 23%.
Liveable, walkable cities are simply incompatible with any large amount of Blacks or Mexicans. Europe is suffering from Muslim / North African / Pakistani street crime as well, along with imported Black variety. Witness the car-b-ques in France, the ethnic cleansing (of native Europeans) out of whole areas, targeting of native European women, etc.
Mono-racial/cultural places like Japan or (still for now) Helsinki are safe, import a bunch of people from Pakistan or Nigeria and surprise, they act as criminal in Europe or the US as they do back home. All those nice things you like, are simply incompatible with diversity. And Multi-racial societies. Pedestrian life implies safety, you can walk on the street without getting mugged, and you don't have to be Lou Ferrigno to do it, either. You can be old or frail.
Nothing comes for free. Multiculturalism costs ... all those pedestrian oriented cities. Because no one wants to be beaten to death like this White guy in Philly for ticking off a bunch of Black guys by yelling for a cab. Diversity = private cars, the internet withdrawal from public space, great social isolation, ever larger commutes from distant but safe suburbs. Big surprise, Third World people act Third World.
...but Wired UK is a poor impersonation of Wired US. So much so that both editions go on sale side-by-side here in the UK. Not sure what the circulation figures for both are here but I buy the US edition.
Retro Gamer
Empire - best movie mag
Comic Hero
Scifi X
Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US? YES
Ok, here is something I've always wondered. How is the UK not a part of Europe? Geographically, that's where it's defined, and being a group of islands doesn't make it any more separate than Madagascar is from Africa, or Indonesia from Asia. I'd argue that Russia would have a stronger case for being considered as separate from Europe - the bulk of its terretory is in Asia, as a result of which their interaction w/ their neighbors range from the US & Japan to Turkey and the EU.
Actually that reminds me - while going through the IANA site and seeing how the RIRs are divided, RIPE's area of coverage surprised me. It's supposed to cover Europe, but in addition to Europe, it not only covers all of Russia and Turkey, but also the Central Asian stan countries, Israel and the entire Middle East west of Pakistan & Afghanistan. That's a bizarre new definition of Europe, if ever I saw one - no body in their wildest dreams would think of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran or Tajikistan as a part of Europe. Heck, even Israel is in Asia. I'm surprised that Mongolia and North Korea didn't get included under RIPE, given whatever logic they used.
I subscribe to PCFormat. It's interesting because of all the hardware tests and weird little side projects that appear from time to time. Also, Ask Luis is really funny.
The reason Europe (not specifically the EU, hell Norway has tons of magazines, I joke sometimes they have one for each person in the country) has so many magazines has to do with the car vs. public transportation mentality. If you visit cities in the U.S. with excellent public transportation and a culture where news stands are at nearly every station, you'll find that magazine selection is much more substantial than elsewhere.
With the exception of bridal and teen magazines, people don't drag their asses to the store to actually buy magazines anymore. Magazines in Europe are also very much a impulse purchase. Like,"I need a ticket for a train... oooh a magazine that comes with some new makeup!". The more educated (and generally wealthier) people are using iPads or at least phones on the trains these days, but most people still pop into the news stand at the train station and find something to fill their time with. It's also very useful for people who don't like looking at the other people on the trains. I often find myself driving behind trolleys and there will be someone with their head aimed out the back window so they don't have to look at other people on the trolley. When I'm on the train, bus or trolley, many people (better than 15%) will be reading something on paper.
There's no really good reason to buy magazines in the states anymore... well except the picture ones where the images are much higher resolution like National Geographic. But in Europe, they serve a function. So, it's like this in all the cities, but in most countries out here, the companies who are located at the train station also have a presence elsewhere, and since they fill the stores all around the country with the same items, the magazine selection is pretty good everywhere.
When you're in the city centers though, if you are multi-lingual (I'm a New Yorker in Norway and I can read 9 languages... don't be impressed, I barely speak two) so you can go to the major magazine stands and have access to magazines in lots of different languages which increases your selection substantially.
YES says it all as far as I am concerned.
US has had some very good programming and embedded systems related magazines like C/C++ User's Journal, Dr.Dobbs and Embedded Systems Programming. Ten years ago there were many good articles on each of these magazines and in every issue. I found the magazines to be of great quality. I was a fresh engineer and I enjoyed each and every issue very much. All of them had excellent people writing to them like Herb Sutter, Michael Barr, Jack Crenshaw and many others.
But then there was steady decline: paper quality, number of pages, quality articles all went down slowly but steadily.
And now the situation is: .Not _quite_ the same.
- Dr.Dobbs had its final issue on 2009. They still publish it in pdf format. Website is there: http://drdobbs.com/
- C/C++ User's Journal was discontinued on 2006. The own website is gone, but Dr.Dobbs hosts old content and some new articles at: http://drdobbs.com/cpp . Again, not quite the same.
- Embedded Systems Programming is now named Embedded Systems Design. Most of the editors still write to the mag. The website is alive and well on http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded . This has somehow managed to maintain most of its quality.
But for the UK or euro alternatives: There is practically none I know of. So the situation in this field is quite bad.
Long unsocial hours, obviously boring and with quite a lot of responsibility.
Will you do it for peanuts?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Magazine are quite rough contraptions: take them anywhere, and they will do fine.
Although I see a few brave souls with iPads on public transport I frankly can't see myself carrying around a $500 device that can be broken or stolen while I would not mind much if my magazine gets ripped off by a Labrador in the park.
Also you can't do origami with your bloody iPad.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
> Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US?
Do you mean M-16 / M-4 STANAG vs AK-47 / AK-74?
At least in the UK I have never seen a toilet without a seat.
Same in Germany, Spain, Italy. France I can't remember, maybe once.
Turkey is another matter, but since one may have to squat there I think that the toilet seat is not an issue...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, I was to St John a couple of times and I would have to say I was not terribly impressed, the reason being that it is quite idiosyncratic on his choice of ingredients (local traditional produce).
In contrast I ate in Michelin starred restaurants in France and the experience still lingers on my mind.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In Europe, a fascist party is called extremist. In the US, they are called Republicans
For photography, for sure, especially one coming from UK.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nothings against Macworld, which is still pretty good given the hard times publishing is in, but this English Mac magazine, MacFormat, is, to use a tired cliche, thicker and juicier. And apparently it does come with a DVD. (What's the deal with that? I remember when MacAddict shipped with CDs... but I guess US rags don't now?) The writing is much richer, the overall content thicker in MacFormat. That said, I do remember the 1988 issue of Macworld that covered the introduction of the NeXT computers. Back then, the pages were thicker and glossier, and it was evident that there was a much greater ability to spend time and money on producing a lavish journal. Of course that was before the Web changed the world. Appropriately, the Web was created on a NeXT. Curious how the world moves sometimes.
-- haaz.
I'm not sure about other subjects, but the UK motorcycle magazines are far superior to their American counterparts!!! Performance Bikes is an awesome mag, but its like $100+ a year to get a sub. in the USA
As an Avid paintballer, fishkeeper, Warhammer 40k player and tech geek working with multiple technologies (and who isn't?) I have found that magazines that originate from the E.U to be of better quality and full of info that just doesn't make it into magazine here. Particularly one thing that has stood out is that in the Warhammer realm things are geared toward having fun rather that WINNING as the primary focus. The fishkeeping maagzines provide a wealth of info and offer up some great creative subjects. They also provide plenty of trivia within their magazines, something I haven't seen on this side of the pond.
I order New In Chess from the Dutch, and it is the BEST CHESS MAGAZINE ON THE PLANET. It is not the only one, nor the only good one, but it is THE BEST hands down. It is a premium due to import/airmail/etc., but worth every cent! -- Chess player in USA
I have read numerous American photography magazines, and for the most part they have never met a camera they didn't like. The most damning thing they might say about a camera is "despite some of it's faults, it's still pretty good camera". The photography magazines from the UK cut more to the quick: if they don't like a camera, they let you know and they don't use weasel words to please manufacturers. Pretty much if a camera sucks, they'll tell you so.