Event Coverage RIP: Rod & Custom Magazine

I just signed up for another two years as well and the bastards didn't say anything about the mag going on-line instead of print. That was the last mag I was subscribing to, so I guess I'll be saving myself a little more money now as I'll no longer be subscribing to any print mags and certainly no on-line ones.

 

I have been on the road for 3 weeks and just heard, I just got one in the mail. I guess it is the last.. Now they have room for another gun magazine or rap music cars.

 

I thought about all this junk this morning and realized that once again, PANIC is rampant in the rumor mill and we're all whining because our favorite toys are being taken away. Maybe they aren't.

Yea, in my opinion, magazines are great. I love having something substantial to hold. But times are a changing. So, I'll get used to it. Just like most of you will get used to magazines being internet only.

No one's controlling what you read, they're just telling you to get the same info from somewhere else. I have not read one thing about R&C going away. Just the format I'm used to. And isn't that what Ryan does every so often? Doesn't he change the format and so far it's better every time? Well, R&C being available on the net only will suck, but just until we're used to it.
I get the New York Times on the net and love it. At the book store, the Sunday edition of the NYT's weighs about 10 pounds! It takes me a few minutes to find my favorite sections and some sections I don't even look at. So, when they went digital, I loved it.

Ask yourself this. If the HAMB was a monthly magazine, how would you feel having to wait a month or two to get an answer to a tech question? Or how about having to wait a month to find out if the folks here liked your new build or not? Event coverage 3 months late? Sound cool? Not anymore, but those things were just some of the bad things about magazines. How about the issues that got "lost" or showed up with a page missing? Still going to miss that shit?

So, I'm off the sadness bullshit wagon and hoping that R&C and the others will just go digital with paid subscriptions to most of the good stuff. Like they are almost doing now. Which, if you think about this logically, is actually the smart thing to do.

Besides, if it's on your computer, you can print out the articles and photos you like and skip what you don't. YOU will be your own editor! Sort of. Print it out and haul it to the bathroom, just like before.

 

I subscribe to R&C, Hot Rod, Street Rodder, Car & Driver, Popular Mechanics and buy Hot Rod Deluxe, and buy off the rack Rod & Kulture and any other mag that looks interesting to me.
No longer will I renew my Source Interlink mags for several years as in the past. The executives at Source Interlink thinks they know business, just wait until the paid subscribers dry up. They'll be scratching their MBA filled heads wondering WTF.
First Petersen Pub. was sold to Emap now this crap. I owned a few shares of Petersen back in the day just to be part of it.
I know making money is key to survival. I'm for that. Now it seems only the CEO's come out on top while the hard workers who actually contribute to the success are tossed aside.
I'll be looking to subscribe to more of the independent mags.

 

For all practical purposes, Source Link may be out of business. Those MBA heads are probably looking for work now.

 

According to the WSJ, close to 6,000 full time and part time jobs were lost when Source Interlink was dropped by Time, Inc. as the distributor for SI, Time, etc. Spinning the magazine business off and forming another entity made a lot of sense. Talked to a good friend the other day who still has a job on one of the magazines and he said that all of his efforts were redirected from print to the 'net almost two years ago. Feedback on his 'net material on FB is almost instantaneous. If you threw out the whining and misinformation on the publishing business, this thread could be reduced from 17 pages to three!

 

Proof, you can't run a company, successfully,
without understanding the industry and customer.

Source Interlink screwed the pooch on their
magazine distribution side of the business.
Only a matter of time before they go bankrupt, again.

 

Many of the posters lamenting their subscriptions premature terminations remind me of someone telling me their closest friend was killed in a horrible accident, and that he was wearing a pair of jeans he borrowed from them, and then adding "I'm sure gonna miss those pants." Rod and Custom brought a lot of us together through the years with images of cars we'd like to own and/or build; and it was full of tech articles that, if you collected the mags, became a part of your 'black book' with references to everything you wanted to do, that had been done by someone else and came out right. If you are a die-hard car nut chances are you have stacks of back issues with slips of paper in them as a quick and dirty method to find images, or tech articles. I subscribed off and on, and bought back-issues to make up for ground I lost. Pat Ganahl left an indelible mark when R&C came back in the eighties. He filled in a lot of gaps for those of us who missed out on traditional rods and customs, when it went black in the seventies. And good, bad, or indifferent it was still a touchstone to the 'idea' of a perfect traditional ride. We all know that history is full of publications with golden years that tell their reader/subscribers stories, disseminate the news, cover historical events and then vanish. In the era we now live, a business can use up a lot of axes; especially one owned by a multinational conglomerate. Blood is preferred to red ink, and they have only one goal: profitability, growth, and dividends for the investors. For them a goose is just a goose, even if to us, the subscriber/readers it laid golden eggs. Rod and Custom is dead! Long live Rod and Custom!
And, as to digital media over print, the tactile sensation of having something in your hands that can be carried about, trumps the genius of bits and bytes; though, to be honest, if HAMB & The Jalopy Journal, et al, is the pioneering example of where we're going, digital will influence and inform those with a hunger for images and articles, comments and the how-to blow by blow tech of the past. So while we lament the passing of one of the icons, let us be thankful we are doing so through the generosity of the other. Carl

 

"Talked to a good friend the other day who still has a job on one of the magazines and he said that all of his efforts were redirected from print to the 'net almost two years ago. Feedback on his 'net material on FB is almost instantaneous. If you threw out the whining and misinformation on the publishing business, this thread could be reduced from 17 pages to three!"
"Whining and misinformation"!! This is a pretty accurate summation of the difference between printed media and internet sites. I never had to endure 17 pages of a newspaper or magazine to get 3 pages of worthwhile information.

 

You didn't have to read this thread and post on it either. Corporations are not evil but they can just as easily be run into the ground as a small business. Mergers and buyouts seldom benefit both parties. I started watching these things 20 years ago when dads company, Coast to Coast was bought out by True Serve. A brand that was a part of every small town disappeared overnight.

 

Now that really SUCKS !

 

I just renewed and see my check cleared the bank in mid may. When you take money for a product with no intention of delivering that is stealing. Not the end of the world but I won't be trusting any magazines from here forward.

 

What a bummer, I hope some one buys the title and picks it up again. I was'ent able to find it for sale the last few months and did'nt see a booth at Grand National.

 

I went too barns and noble yesterday and they had only three hot rod magazines
Rodders journal (like)
And two new ones I never heard off , with only one mag for its place .
The sad part was it was on the bottom shelf hard too find.


Posted from Austinrod

 

Glass half full or half empty? In a sense, the demise of R&C can be seen as an opportunity to improve the lot of traditional hot rodders like those who frequent the H.A.M.B. because it creates an information vacuum just begging to be filled.

Pretty much everybody here has a decent digital camera, a computer and passable communications skills. So instead of whining about the loss of R&C's unique editorial content, how's about if we create our own by increasing the number and scope of the build threads here on the H.A.M.B.?

Don't think your project is interesting enough? Well if one member can squeeze a hundred and sixty some odd pages out of whipping the ugly out of a T-bucket there's plenty of room for your project too.

So, quit whining and get to snappin' them pix. R&C may be a tough act to follow, but hell, we're hot rodders. We can do it just as good as they did - and maybe even better!

 

Same here my check cleared mid May. I wrote them the same day I found out (here) that R&C was dead. Today I got an email back. They are offering to extend my subscription(s) to their "core publications" No thanks, refund my money. We'll see what happens.

 

Exactly! Well said!

 

I just re-uped for two years and nobody said anything about folding. You can't tell me these pricks didn't know they were closing shop. I am good till the end of 2015. I wonder if they are going to contact all the subscribers or just make off with our money!

 

Went to Hudson's to buy and black and white TV today. Found out Hudson's is no longer in business and no one is making black and white TVs anymore. I wonder why?

 

you guys still write checks?

 

Anybody see the irony of a site dedicated to "tradition", mocking and rejecting tradition as obsolete? We have serveral thousand years olf the written word as tradition, about 25 of the internet.
Hmmmmm.
Wonder which will be more enduring in the long run.
Every generation thinks they are just too cool, but finds out later they don't know squat and become obsolete. This WILL happen to the "E" generation, you just don't know it yet. It ain't the answer to everything and sadly, once things are lost, they can be lost forever.

 

An every generation has Chicken Littles running around claiming how everything is going to come to a crashing end because it's not the same as it always has been but we always seem to manage.

 

Nobody is being chicken little, that's very simplistic and dismissive. It's just too easy to chalk it up to fear of change, not so easy to address real concerns like vanishing attention spans, the skills of reading and learning.
Why drive old cars anyway? The new cars do everything better, are faster, more comfortable, stop better, are safer anyway aren't they?
Oh yeah, the undefinable element of a soul perhaps?

 

What killed car magazines for me was in the late 1980's- early 1990's was when all the magazines had more advertisement than anything. Then when there was a how-to article like how to build a hot rod it was buy a complete bolt together kit from some kit car company. What's the fun in that!

 

Advertisements are how people that make hot rod products sell things, without ads how do they make a living? Psychic transmissions?
Maybe they should, instead of featuring "kits", should tell you to hop in a time machine and go to a junk yard, pick up some early Ford parts and a v-8?
Ever think that not everyone has the skills or time to do everything from scratch?

 

We like traditional and will always care about traditional. Why? Because at some point, things changed and that change made us appreciate the past. The past creates such a neat contrast to the current and future. Imagine if automotive technology never changed after 1932 and the cars made today never evolved from 1932 in looks, operation and function. We would certainly have no desire or reason to collect them nor would they be fun to drive, race, restore, build, re-create or show. Rod and Custom is the same way. It was time for it to go but it certainly will not be forgotten. It was just not supported anymore by subscribers or advertisers in a way that made it feasible to produce-a realistic sign of the times-like my black and white TV reference in an earlier post. It's passing will make the early issues even more valuable then they are today and I am sure in the years to come, those issues from the 2000s will also become valuable, cherished and respected.

 

.Always looked forward to picking up the next issue off the stand. She had a good run. The times they are-a -changing.

 

My wife and three adult children buy books on their kindles. They cost less than "regular" books, and one can store hundreds of books on a kindle, and read whichever one wants at any time without dragging the whole library around.

My second grade grandson reads all the time; give him some money and he will want to go to the bookstore and buy some books. He makes all A's and is an encyclopedia of information, absorbs facts like a sponge. Does math in his head like when he orders donuts on Saturday: "I'd like a dozen donuts, please. Three chocolate and four with sprinkles, that's seven so I have to pick five more..."

Every Thursday I go to a preschool and sing and play guitar with the kids. Amazingly, they can read, write, remember, pay attention, learn songs I teach them, etc

A few magazines that weren't making money close shop and all of a sudden, life as we know it has come to an end? I don't think so.

Truly amazing the amount of drama over a magazine or two going out of business, magazines that I subscribed to for years but quit because they weren't that useful to me. Apparently enough others felt the same.

 

I remember when it came back in the 80's.... I was in highschool then ( The Pat Gahnal years). Hate to see it go.... but I haven't purchased a copy in several years. Guess that makes me part of the problem!

 

I only have one concern. If something happens where I can not get the information I want or need online, for whatever reason, then what? If I would have bought the book, or magazine, I'd have it forever. I'd go broke on paper and ink if I tried to print off all the tech on The HAMB or other internet resources.