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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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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."
You should see the magazines from Japan (especially the car magazines).
I agree. You just can't get decent vehicular tentacle rape magazines outside of Japan.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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".
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.
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.