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Starlog magazine is dead, long live its website
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on April 14, 2009 - 10:58pm.
The venerable science fiction institution known as Starlog Magazine is no more. At least the ink-on-paper version is. They've decided to get all futuristic on us and publish their stories online only. But in an electronic world of imitators and competitors, it's going to be quite a struggle to survive.
At least they've got their brand and their logo. That's got to count for something, although it probably only resonates with the generation that grew up reading the magazine. The new fans are about as likely to be familiar with Starlog as they would be with Astounding Stories Magazine.
The generation that did grow up with Starlog were busily mourning its passing and how much it meant to them, although I'd bet that if you asked any of them when the last time was that they actually bought an issue it would probably have been one or two decades ago.
Given the dire straits that the publishing industry is in these days, especially for advertising-supported magazines, I wonder how many more we'll see switch over to online-only editions in the coming months. The bigger question is how many of them will survive that jump.
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Demise of magazines.
I'm a bit surprised that it has fallen under the wheels of progress. I'm not sure what to make of the magazine industry these days. I was just looking at the huge racks at the local Chapters last week, and despite all the clamoring about the demise of the genre magazines, I could swear that there were more magazines now than ever before. For one thing, there are 'specialty' magazines for a bunch of the genre movie releases. Then there are a bunch that are dedicated to particular shows. Even the horror mags seem to be multiplying in the last few years.
I too used to buy Starlog in the late 70's and enjoyed them quite a lot. I stopped buying them when it became to obvious that they would have these glowing 'reviews' of movies that were utter crap. In essence catering to the studios. The pictorials were always nice, and there was the odd piece of real news now and then. But ultmately, it wasn't worth it for me at least.
~ Lazarus ~
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