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General Climbing Discussion

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Rock Magazine - new ed 17-Feb-2012 At 2:27:01 PM will5686

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>>But magazine
>>circulation is down over 5% in the last six months alone (according to
>>the Australia Bureau of Circulation), so budgets are getting smaller,
>staff
>>are getting paid less, contributors are getting paid less, and quality
>>is necessarily going to go down.
>>..... But if he immerses himself
>>in the culture
>
>I don't think those two sentences go together. With fast-diminishing returns
>in the business, what's his incentive to become increasingly specialised
>from a zero-start? He'll just follow the mainstream money.

Sorry, I should have clarified that if you look at the circulation figures the major falls are in the 'mainstream' publications, ie. those with a general audience. Magazines like FHM and Womens Weekly are suffering the most. Niche magazines have, in general, performed better. So the mainstream money is drying up, because these are the products that compete the most with FMCG like chocolate bars, whereas 'hobby' magazines have a more dedicated audience who have fewer options for finding that information elsewhere. So he doesn't really have the option to bail out and "follow the money", therefore he has a good motivation to learn. Besides, climbing is awesome, why wouldn't he want to take the opportunity to get paid to learn about it?

I admit that the whole plan could seriously backfire and they could lose their audience, especially if he doesn't learn quickly. But people buy magazines to look at the pretty pictures, which he can't really mess up, except by leaving out captions, and I am sure he has already learnt his lesson with that one.

>It can be quite disheartening, and with diminishing rates for contributors,
>why bother?

It is my understanding that none of the folk writing for CRUX got paid, except for a few of them who got prizes that were probably donated. If people were willing to write interesting and funny articles for free, then I assume that even a token payment will motivate people to send stuff in.

But then again, getting paid for things does tend to change people's attitudes towards what they are doing, making them less motivated and more disgruntled. If you have read Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" then you know what I am talking about. Here is a good article summarising the idea: www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2008/09/17/why-good-deeds-and-money-dont-mix/

So the motivation to send stuff in shouldn't be to get paid a token amount of money, but to be part of an awesome magazine that is better for your contribution.