I too will miss my favorite magazines. If truth be told, most had moved away from me in terms of interest. My interest hasn't really changed but the magazines apparently felt that they had to "keep up with the times" and changed hoping to attract the younger generation when all they did was alienate their older readers. I am not as pessimistic as some of you. When the automobile was invented it didn't signal the end for horses. There are more horses now than when they were used for transportation and plowing. The horse's utility and use has certainly changed (unless they belong to the Amish) and in many ways life is better for the horse and the people who own and cherish them. I saw a documentary that included an interview with a Harley Davidson dealer in Japan. The reporter asked the obvious question of the Japanese Harley Davidson dealer, "How can you sell a Harley Davidson motorcycle in Japan when there are plenty of Japanese bikes that are faster, cheaper, and better built"? The dealer replied, "The Harley Davidson" is the last hand made motorcycle" and then proceeded to point out how the welding wasn't consistent etc. My point is that times change, interest change, and life transforms to accommodate these changes. All my "gray beard friends" are concerned that they will be the last person that still likes , hot rods, or hand made boats or homebuilt airplanes. More likely, these things will be more cherished in the future although their role will certainly change.
A related thread by @Ryan from over nine years ago: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/in-a-nut-shell.530363/
I mentioned American Rodder on another thread but I was thinking of Rodding USA. The cost to ship to Canada just drove the cost up to where it became too expensive for what it is. Don't discount Canadian Hot Rod guys, old school style with tech articles from time to time and I'm not aware it pushes any particular products. This issue brings to mind a suggestion I made last year about having a section of the HAMB dedicated to "features" on our vehicles much like a magazine but not a build thread. There are plenty of finished cars and trucks that could have a feature done on them by the owner or builder!
Rodding USA is a great magazine and I have all issues. You can get it from Larry at Graffiti Publications in Castlemaine.
I love print media. Say what you like, but the birth of hot rodding and all these styles, tastes, and technology changes that happened from the 1940s until the death of print will be with us to eternity. What’s happens the day after the death of print, is gone in a number of years forever. This discussion we’re having will be inaccessible within a decade or so. Technology has allowed 1 million people to simultaneously read one copy. An electronic copy. A copy only one or a few people own, and control at their whim. In the days of print, 1 million copies were produced so 1 million people could read it. It is virtually impossible to alter that storyline printed a million times. Somewhere, someone, will have an original. History in that case, is safe from revisionist minds. I first confronted that thought a few years back while watching David Freiburger resurrect his 70 Super Bee on YouTube, and drive it to the Moparty and the strip in Vegas. The original footage was split between two, 1 hour clips. After all TEN online shows were brought to Motortrend.com, those episodes were radically chopped, and lots of interesting and good content was lost forever. You can see the chopped down episodes, but most of the good stuff was lost. At least to public viewing. All of rodding, future history, is at risk from this point forward. This applies to virtually everything, school books, engineering, news, etc. New thinkers changing the past by altering the electronic file. At the extreme, what does it all look like post EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse from a nuc)? The Nazis burned the books. But they couldn’t get all of them. I have photos of my great grandmother and her family from a portrait in 1898. She was just a little girl. Will your great, great grandson have that of you? Think about it. Like all of you, I’ll bravely run to the future. But I think we’ve lost something that matters. Bryan
Returned from a delivery tonight 45 miles down the road. While I was their, I purchased a land line phone at a big box store which I just plugged in to the wall jack. Our two major retail chains went out of business because of going bankrupt. Our store locations were turning a profit. Now one of our biggest stores in town is a dollar store. My flip phone is turned off unless I leave town. The only computer thing I do is the HAMB and then craigslist when I can`t sleep. Our town is famous for having a company known for creating what we call a calendar with pictures. It shut down in the 90`s. I still have a calendar hanging on the wall along with a clock to tell time by. I cancelled cable 3 years ago and get my news from the local radio station and the local one day a week newspaper. Also have at least a couple years worth of magazines to catch up on reading. My one man shop has never been busier. I work mostly on old cars. Am I a dinosaur?
That's an incredibly ironic comment from someone who has links to both FB & IG in their signature... FB mines the HAMB, plain and simple. I didn't realize it until I installed the FaceBook Container extension in FireFox. It adds a little fence icon in the upper right-hand corner: If the page tries to send data to FB, the extension blocks it & the icon turns to: Every HAMB page I have open in a tab has the exclamation mark icon. I looked at the source code for a HAMB page picked at random and it has two references to FB: xmlns:fb="https://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml" (Looks like an innocuous link, right?) <div class="facebookLike shareControl"> <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/hello-from-paris.420830/" data-width="400" data-layout="standard" data-action="recommend" data-show-faces="true" data-colorscheme="light"></div> </div> (This is the standard FB Like button that used to be ubiquitous on the web. Oddly enough, it isn't visible, even though the code is still in place.) // Facebook Javascript SDK XenForo.Facebook.appId = ""; XenForo.Facebook.forceInit = true; </script> (With the namespace link in the header and the JavaScript, FB has access to the HAMB. 'Leaking' your data is built into the forum software that the HAMB is built on.) FaceBook knows more about your time on the HAMB than your loved ones. (IG isn't nearly as intrusive, but it doesn't need to be, its a subsidiary of FB.)
Lucky for me both Rodders Journal and Rodding USA get collected the day they arrive with Larry at Graffiti. I got my first Rodders Journal from Steve at Louisville in 1994 and was with Larry when he took on the distributor for it. I also spoke to both magazines whilst at the 50th NSRA even this year.
I have mixed emotions on the demise of print magazines. I've been buying and saving motorhead magazines since around 1952 (15 to 25 cents the issue?), a few issues per month originally, growing to about 15 now. Not to mention the burden on my retirement budget, I worry each month whether I'm approaching the "straw that broke the camel's back", i.e., floor or wall in my house collapsing.
T.E.N the parent company of many of the mags that have been killed off seem to be moveing heavily into subscriber video content. I subscribe to no magazines but I have a Motor Trend on Demand sub. Their social media pages have huge followings and the shows (OT for here) are pretty awesome. Best car tv I ever saw by a long shot. So I'd say publishers are just going where the money is. It seems a lot of people are stoked to watch Roadkill and Hot Rod Garage and whatnot which in my opinion is Car craft magazine in video form. I hope they make a tv show that focuses hard on traditional stuff.
In a twist of fate, I actually discovered the H.A.M.B. through print media! If it hadn't have been for The Rodder's Journal, I never would have known about it. Then I bought copies of the Jalopy Journal, volumes 2 and 3 and my whole world opened up. I am grateful to have these around to look at. I really enjoy holding a magazine and the smell of the paper. Hot Rod has been going down in quality since David Freiburger left as editor in my opinion and most of the cars they feature are unobtainable to an average 30 year old guy. But, watching the other people on the H.A.M.B., you realized you can do it! I have noticed the quality of some episodes going down on Motor Trend on demand as well. I think it is to make them appeal to non-gearhead people with shows doing dumb hi-jinks sort of episodes where the weld two Isuzu Rodeos together and crash them around a junkyard. I am tired of social media and streaming and driving my old Chevy truck is a welcome relief from a barrage of disruptions during the day.
Just because the world around us changes. Doesn`t mean we have to. Never in my life have I sent a text. Only use E Mail on my wife`s account about 4 times a year. Facebook and Instagram, only when people show me or someone posts a link. In the 90``s, what ever happened to this paperless office which was all the rage. My magazine collection is over 5 thousand and growing.
its funny, the tear off card on the cover says 2 years for $49.95 the 3 cards inside that fall out on your lap offer 2 years for $39.95... Chappy
I thought the title was "PAINT FINALLY DRIED". Oh well, now that I'm here.. Early every morning my next door neighbor goes out in his robe and slippers, rain or shine, and picks up the morning paper. To read in the 'office' I presume. Or maybe 'use' in the office..
Well we knew this would raise some metabolic rates, huh? Show of hands, who was still 'scribed to the long gone titles? Other than TRJ my hand wasn't up. Online content? Funny sometimes, still have to wade through a swamp of shit and cat memes to get to what the individual wants to see or reference. Sort of like 1/2 the pages of these long lost mags full of the same ads every month breaking up your reading pace, but at times more anguishing. Which is better? Apparently tech shit sells better, and most of us grey crotchity bastards are dinosaurs anyways, but what makes something "better" in absolute meanings? You. Numbers. Revenue. According to what our fearless reader banged out for us (awesome by the way) there's that "look at me!" thing driving it too. But wait, isn't there a measure of that we all have in this life as well? We don't talk about it, tend to shy away from the ones who shamelessly run their yappers about themselves, their car, their latest scores, their "...only one in the world!" horse apples. You know that guy, or maybe those guys, right? The relative anonymity of the 'net allows more of that hence the wading through I referenced above. A little is ok, we all like a bit of peer review about our plans, stance, wheels, etc. Online we can reference direct help, when back in the day a tech tip took 2-3 months to answer in a magazine. That's clearly better. So screw it, we all know what's good about tech media but aside from the occasional stench there's enough bad to go with it too. A little over a year ago I could search specific topics and actually get answers. Now if I search "1941 Cadillac water pump" I'll get everything BUT info or part numbers on it. I'll get lease deals, Asian import sheet metal for shit from the 2000s, scores of ebay deals on same import floor mats, tail lights, stick on goo-gaa shit and worse. In my mind I'm thinking WTF? Then I read in the nat'l news that search engines combined their might and also moved it overseas to handle the volume. Now it's "Fuck you dude, AND your 41 Cadillac! You'll see what WE WANT YOU to see!" That's a cost similar to big biz sucking up all the print media then rendering down to septic tank sludge and pumping it out for good. For profit. Some silicon valley mope wouldn't know a Packard Super 8 from a Hewlett-Packard printer so another rectal exam you didn't need in the form of incomplete and uninformed algorythms. Sorry to sound like a conspiracy nut but it's hard to disprove isn't it? Over a decade of reliable searches that helped in buisness now requires creative digging and experimental search techniques. "Hey try this..." and "I use waa-zoo blah-blah and get results..." and more only to find that they too eventually get sucked dry and aim you right back to Asian sheet metal. None of this is easy, free, without guilt or pain, nor custom taylored to what YOU want except in advertising. Look up the latest price on a .38 spl and see what ads and stories now pop up in your IG or home pages. And finally (sorry to sound like Bill Mahar ) there is a level of influence driven by our pages here on TJJ/HAMB. Exclusive influence? Maybe, maybe not, but surely a driving force in how the whole life has shaped up to what wee see now. That's a net positive (or is that 'net positive?). I've not been shy about that observation in the past, and at the same time don't think any extra props or changes are needed to increase said influence. Some things are just fine as-is. This is just a window into "our house" if you will and those who try to copycat probably fail or become tediously boring. You, me, the members run that influence in honest and genuine fashion. Even the few Kong types full of 'net bravado shape it into a virtual reality of sorts. TJJ would likely suck as periodocal print media. Yearbooks? Probably. Calanders work too as a 'best of' thing. But here, live, real time, and even archived info works well. Can you go to any show and find 100 folks who come here? Probably not unless you're at something like Hershey or TROG, and that too is just right. I'd hate it if we were mainstream and on everybody's screens all day. That "thing" can't be put into words, and sure as hell can't transfer to regular print. But for the record I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT take TRJ for granted. It's as unique as we are, right? Go ahead and beat me up about this where I'm off. I can take it
Say it ain't so. Street Rodder and Super Chevy going away! How many of use got our start in this hobby looking at car magazines? Most I suspect. This company AMI that owned some of our favorite mags started as owner of the National Enquirer ! I bet there is not a car person in the whole corporate staff. While I enjoy the electronic car sites there is nothing like having your car shown in a national magazine. You can see thousands of cars on the internet each day but seeing a car in a magazine is special. My hope is someone will buy some of these car magazine brands and keep them going.
"When computers took over the print business one person ended up doing the jobs that five had done - design, typesetting, proof reading, layout/production, pre-press." proartguy is right. I'm the entire pre-press department at a University print shop.
Your magazine collection will grow very slowly from now on it seems. I have embraced technology, I have my smart phone pocket computer and I really like the access to information it provides. I don't like everything technology has brought us for example things like people having conversations wherever they please on their phones, remember I grew up when making a call meant you had to find a phone booth. And I despise Fakebook and most other forms of social media where everyone thinks the world revolves around them. My 87 year old father on the other hand thinks its still 1950. At least it should be because that would suit him fine for the technology level he likes. The world changes and no you don't need to, but you can choose to use the changes to enhance your journey and ignore the changes you don't like or need. You should try it, or just sit there and grumble and be left behind.
Great mental image of Benjamin Franklin and Johannes Gutenburg sitting in a bar or tavern, both looking at live web streaming from a rover on Mars from J.P.L. on a laptop computer!
I asked my students if any liked magazines, most said yes. One even has a subscription (shocking) when I asked why do they think a large group of magazines shut down they pointed at their phones. We finished up class watching the SEMA parade video the other day (skipped around cause its very long) I was impressed with their knowledge of vehicles. Most could name every car from muscle cars up. none of them could name any car before the muscle car era. Movies rarely use anything older than muscle cars, the folks with old cars rarely drive em. When I show them pics of hot rods and customs they really like them. Maybe when the hoarders and non drivers pass away, young folks will rediscover them. Just a thought on a side note...... just asked my students about all this info gathering on social media We talked about how some of folks do not like it and the possible negative effects of it. The info gathering aspect made em giggle. They were wondering what possible issues could happen from using FB or IG to look at car stuff while not being concerned what info could be gathered from using car message boards.
They might not have read 1984. Or maybe it doesn't have the same effect today that it did 50 years ago
most are aware of the book I guess it doesn't mean anything yet at their age. however, my looking at car parts on ebay of FB is probably not of military value. no matter what device you use, you can be tracked or data obtained. even that land line at home.
Great topic, looks like I will be reading a few less magazines in the near future. I recently sold one of my old favorites. Making room in the garage I uncovered several boxes of reading material that goes back a few decades. I could open a book/magazine outlet with all of them,
The car mags used to be the source for services and places to go place a mail order for parts. The internet has slowly killed off magazines. I do not have the time to read anything like I used to and I always hated to throw them away.
Perhaps they're savvy enough to realize that the tracking is pretty much all about selling you stuff. I think a lot of folks are OK with that. Specialty magazine ads are a great way to reach a targeted audience....but they're still much more expensive to get the same number of "eyeballs" as internet ads
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