The other day I was going about my daily routine of errands when I received a call from a world leading martial arts magazine. They basically were trying to make sure I was still buying their magazines and interested in some feedback. Well, one thing I am good at is giving feedback. After all these years of teaching one would think so! So I proceeded to let the representative know why I rarely if ever buy their magazine.
1. It has become so ad driven
2. Because of the ads there is very little content
3. People that buy their ads are about the only people featured in the magazine
4. Because of 3. they have a lot of really poor practitioners in their magazine regularly and why would I want to read their drivel
5. There are simply a lot better ways to get information online then reading a magazine that has little to no content
Well you can imagine his shock or…. concern! The growing trend is moving away from magazines because quite frankly most of them are very poor. The Journal for Asian Martial Arts is still very good and content heavy. However, all of the rest have fallen into looking like a vogue or another magazine driven by ads. Notice to Martial Arts magazines everywhere you need to have content or there is no way I will pay $7 or so for your junk! I sincerely hope that this trend can be reversed as I used to get a lot of enjoyment from reading a good martial magazine!!!
See You On The Mats!
Copyright: Instinctive Response Training LLC 2011
Brian R. VanCise
Note: This blog is opinion only and neither Instinctive Response Training LLC or Brian R. VanCise are responsible for any third party actions.
Visit us at: www.instinctiveresponsetraining.com
I still have the giant boxes you gave me full of those magazines, some of them are good but alot have alot of wacky ads I agree.
I absolutely 100% agree
I’ve noticed that the ad to content ratio of martial arts and health/weightlifting magazines makes the women’s mags look like slackers.
Maybe I’d buy more of ’em if they weren’t responsible for people like Jim Wagner being labeled as “experts” and encouraging their self promotion.
For the occasional decent article or column — they ain’t worth the money.
That is exactly one of my issues Jim. Making someone out to be an expert when in reality they have paid a lot of money for ads in the magazine. In other words they buy their expert status or articles via the ads. Not that many decent articles when they are more like paid advertisements.