RE: AMA Magazine -Whould you buy it?
Wow! Interesting reading between the lines of this conversation. I'm not surprised that most people seem to have a difficult time separating MA magazine from the AMA itself. I suspect that at least half the respondents who like or dislike the magazine, do so because they interpret the question as a value judgment of the AMA and are not judging only the content of the magazine. Someone said MA is a newsletter to its membership. I found that comment very funny since there is usually just a page or two of membership information within the pages of MA. The rest is purely advertising. And if the advertising only pays for itself, then why include it at all? Why isn't advertising paying for articles of interest to the hobby? If advertising doesn't pay any bills then its basically free to the advertisers and provides little benefit to the membership.
Ben, its not that I don't like MA. No, I take that back. You're right I don't like MA as it is today. Frankly, after more than a year of getting and reading it, I find it boring. After the last issue I decided to ask others if they found it just as boring as I did so I started this survey/discussion. Didn't mean to turn it into a discussion of the AMA though and still don't. So far the responses suggest 28 people like MA and 22 don't last time I checked the numbers. But as I said the survey numbers are skewed by feelings about AMA so its anyone's guess what the truth about MA itself really are. But I suspect most know its lacking. Even your comment seems to suggest this. Just like we know that the hobby needs to recruit more people. Well in its current form MA isn't helping, and in my opinion is only hurting that cause. Every new person to the AMA who reads MA should love to get and read it every month and not come away from it disappointed like I do.
MA always has a great front cover though, on almost every issue. I wish I could contribute to help make it better, because I would. But I consider myself much too new to this hobby to contribute to the magazine. But it needs more articles, more how to, more information, more nice to know things relevant to the hobby, and a lot less advertising. Even the few articles it does have at the moment are little more than disguised advertising. If we removed all the advertising, the magazine would be no more than about 10 pages. Thats about the size of a real newsletter. Not that we should, just a measure of informational value versus boring advertising. Some advertising is desirable, but MA is way over the top. As it is, its almost as if the purpose of MA is to provide advertising and the few pages of information/articles to the membership are just a bonus!
Shaggy