Confused...

I didn’t intend to start a bun fight but moving on

Diane

I'm in the positive feedback camp for ME. Every month there is something new that adds to the improving quality of the magazine. The articles "Problems of combustion in small i/c engines" and "locomotive adhesion" were cases in point. However, there have been a few articles in MEW that were marginally ME territory.

The point I was making was if the two magazines don’t ensure they retain their identities through their content they could come to the position where one or the other becomes irrelevant.

I’m thinking along the lines of Ian. I imagine that some point back there was so much material available that a split was the obvious. MTM or whoever they were at the time had an opportunity increase their readership, and more importantly their advertising revenue.

Now that so much is done online on the various forums, including what could be seen as interactive build articles, I imagine that written articles are harder to come by *. There could well come a point when MTM, in order to maintain quality, may need to balance the economics of running what could become two similar magazines.

In my case on renewing my subscriptions ME is renewed without thinking about it, but with MEW I consider whether I want to do it every time. If it comes about that there is no point of difference between the two I’ll be dropping one in favour of one of the alternatives.

Pete

* (Stewart Hart has the right idea, he does both by posting builds online and then writing them up as articles.)

I have taken ME since 1961 mostly as a subscriber. In the last few years before Diane became the editor I was getting very disillusioned about the magazine and its contents and was on the point of giving up on my "old friend".

What a change Diane has brought about!

Although I do not build locos or traction engines I find the ME of today very readable, interesting and covers a wide range of interests.

Keep up the good work Diane and thank you for a super magazine.

Eric

Thank you Eric. Your comments are very much appreciated. There are so many hours go into producing ME that it is great to know that it is heading the right way. Makes all this 'overtime' worthwhile. The first thing that has to be understood is that the Editor will never please everyone all the time. But, as you say, if there is enough variety, then each page might have something new so might be worth even a quick glance.
I have been in the Editor's chair almost a year now and I have found it a long, difficult job to try to re-engage writers who had become so disheartened. It's my hope that the improvements will be noticed and encourage more new, quality writers to come forward.

Diane

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Gray,

I hope you don't mind my responding to just this snippet of your post.

It's more a matter of confusion than fuss.

I have a large collection of old Model Engineer magazines; most of which I bought secondhand, for a few coppers apiece; and I treasure them for the workshop articles.

When MEW was launched, I started to buy it regularly; and eventually took a subscription. The logic was that the new magazine was expected to carry all or most of the workshop articles, leaving ME to concentrate on the model-making side of the hobby.

... With hindsight, it is now clear that my logic was flawed.

I am delighted to hear that ME has improved under Diane's editorship, but I still cannot justify subscribing to the magazine just for its workshop/toolmaking articles. ... This is why I suggested that MTM might sell individual series, as eBooks, to subscribers of the other magazine. [obviously this could work both ways]

MichaelG.

Edit: corrected typo.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 11/01/2014 15:40:18

ME is definitely changing on variety. I while ago it would have been all steam or loco related but now it is approaching the 1970's / 1980's layout which IMHO was the highlights of the publication.

As Diane says you won't please all the people but with more variety you stand a better chance of pleasing more.

Also there will always be the folk who only buy one mag and query which one to buy with funds being limited, there is no real answer to this as the ideal answer would be to roll up 4 or 5 mags of interest to the punter in one but in real life this isn't going to happen.

One idea is that because they have made their point clear either on this forum or in postbag / the mags they have proved they can write coherently.

So if they were to write a simple 1 page article for one of the relevant mags that would pay £50, or perhaps MTM could offer a free years subs to a mag of choice.

Win, win situation here for both parties.

EDIT - Stupid keyboard can't spell.

Edited By John Stevenson on 11/01/2014 15:45:50

It's interesting to read the editor's (Stan Bray's) comments in the first issue of MEW. I'm not sure that he particularly confirms that view. However, one bit is interesting:

"Unlike its fortnightly parent, Model Engineer, MEW will not be embarking on the publication of long, multi-part series of articles. Instead, we intend to deal with each project on a one-off, start-to-finish basis in each issue, so you won't have to wait for the next instalment to complete a job."

That's gone out of the windows these days so it seems that the mandate of MEW (and presumably ME) - if one exists - is not particularly sacred anyway.

I think that was a tall order from day one.

We all know how drawn out jobs and therefore the articles become. Who here has started and finished a job in one or two nights ?

Do we not run articles on say offhand, tool and cutter grinders because they can't be completed in a few nights ?

Also I dare say that Stan Bray was treading on unknown ground here, just look at what has gone into the mag since it's start. Would Stan have envisaged say people building their own CNC machines from scratch ?

OMG

Agreed ... on both counts.

As I said "... With hindsight, it is now clear that my logic was flawed."

MichaelG.

If someone is going to complain that MEW doesn't have all the toolmaking articles what is to be done about such articles appearing in EIM. What about the rest of the world. I presume there are no enigneering related magazines in USA, Germany, Australia, ......

Well EiM isn't in the running this month.

Was in W H Smidt [ GMBH ] today and the current edition other than a brief article on CNC was all about steam, loco's and a traction engine running on air.

The American mags are very good but expensive because of shipping, not seen any recent Australian Model Engineers but they used to be heavily steam and loco orientated.

I think its more a question of knowing what you are getting. If you were to take out a subscription to ME because you did not want to read workshop related items then I could not blame someone for feeling a bit peeved if they then found 2 -4 pages being taken up by things you did not want.

With mags from other countries you know what sort of content they are likely to have and buy them if that interests you. I have subscribed to MEB since the first issue but would not be that happy to find half a dozen pages given over to Locos. Likewise I usually get the yearly compilating CD of MiM, I know it contains allsorts in advance so am not disapointed if there is a tooling article or two.

J

PS Graham there was a very nice Super Landini tractor in one issue of MiM, you tube clip here and several others if you look at the guys videos

Edited By JasonB on 11/01/2014 20:42:28

As a reader of both magazines, I'd be quite happy to read a series on a model build in ME, but with related articles from time to time in MEW on, say, pattern making, gear cutting or CNC machining of parts in more detail than would be normal for ME.

Another example could be a CAD tutorial based around creating the drawings for a model - and then the build could be covered in ME.

Another example might be splitting the toolmaking for a clock and the actual build.

Most contributors probably would not want to split their articles in this way, but if done from time to time who knows, such an approach could get the odd reader to 'cross over' from time to time?

Neil

I think it might be reasonable to limit the discussion to the offerings of one publisher.

The "confusion" relates only to the current versions of ME and MEW.

MichaelG.

Neil, I think we have already had this with the boring bar and large steady in EIM and the Ryder Ericson in ME, work sfor me.

J

Edited By JasonB on 11/01/2014 20:45:05

Yes it has to relate to ME and MEW because there isn't any of these posts over on the Village Press forum over the mags they produce.

EiM does not host a forum and their writers have to use this forum ?

So is the problem related to ME and MEW or their readers ?

John:

Maybe because those of us "over here" have decided that Model Engineer is the magazine of choice?

This is not a criticism of Live Steam and Home Shop Machinist, but reasons why I changed subscriptions back to Model Engineer. (I know that I don't fit into the norm over here, so any criticisms implicit are directed towards me)

Live Steam. For a while anyway, all it was about was pictures of people at meets sitting behind large "diesels". Not my cup of tea. Really, not my cup of tea.

Home Shop Machinist. I did pick up the odd one (especially Michael Ward's excellent article series on Scraping) but generally, it does not hold my interest. Maybe they target the beginner rather than the more experienced?

Digital Machinist - I do (did??) subscribe, but this is not within comparison of ME/MEW. I do have issues with the contents, but before I complain, I should write articles for it and see if it is just me.

Model Engineer is, for me, the best out there. Maybe EIM, but I don't seem to get to see this very often to form an opinion as to whether to subscribe or not.

Live Steam did have great series, ref the Kozo series on his geared locomotives. He is back with a narrow gauge Colorado locomotive, which looks very interesting. Don Young used to write for it, too, as did many others. It used to be like Model Engineer, but split off the workshop tooling from the trains, just like ME/MEW did.

I do like variety, as I am sure many others do, too. I do read Model Engineer cover to cover, as there are always things to learn.

Anyway, just another iron in the fire...

John.

An interesting debate but to go back to my original question/observation

MEW split from ME with the express intention of providing a separate vehicle for workshop topics and keeping ME to model making. Of course prior to that time ME covered both topics, as you'd expect.

My observation was that topics that my reasonably be expected to be in one magazine are appearing in the other and asked why this was the case. I wasn't complaining about the quality of the articles or editorship and I agree with everybody else splitting the editor role has improved the quality of both magazines.

The point I was making was that if this blurring of boundaries continues the individual identity of both magazines would put in question the need for one or the other to exist.

To put it another way, if everybody had their own personal league table of magazine preference, and currently ME and MEW are at the top then if this blurring continues one or the other magazines could well slip from the second place to be replaced by some other organisations offering.

That's all really, its all down to personal choice in the end.

Pete

Where was that "express intention" expressed?

(See my post earlier on this page).