powerslam dead.who is to blame? is boxing monthly next?

[Bricks]

I commiserated with Findlay Martin the highly capable editor of powerslam magazine after his sad eulogy in this month's issue that the magazine was closing its doors this month after 21 years.I emailed Findlay to cheer him up that I'd been reading his magazine for twenty 21 years.I also told him that in 21 years I never paid for one issue as I'd always read it for free browsing in wh smith.often I'd taken a flask of tea and read the whole magazine in one or two goes.

Shortly before his heartattack I'd pm"d glyn leach the boxing monthly editor to complain about the recent change in paper.it was cheap and hard on my hands I told glyn and that I felt I had a say as I'd been reading it for 25 years .I let glyn know I'd never paid for it in that time mind I'd read it for free in wh smith.


So is powerslams demise and boxing monthly pending demise down to

A) dumbfuckks wh smith not insisting on sealed plastic wraps so people cant browse and have to buy

B) or is it purely down to the internet

C) or is an arsewhole immoral stingy cocksuvker like me to blame?

If over 500 people vote c I will leave the board in shame

[Boxing Prospect]

D-Other issues:
The failure to look at different avenues of making money (i.e. more advertising)
The prices of magazines keep going up but the quality is going down
They are out of date the day they come out

[chad]

I'd say internet forums, social media and Youtube are to blame. Instant up to the minute news, straight from the horses mouth, which can then be debated by like minded people and all for free. The news and stories in magazines is old hat by the time it hits the shelves. Newspapers and magazines are dying.

[Coco]

Boxing News esp under Harry Mullan concentrated pretty much solely on the boxing, when Claude Abrams modernised it he came in for a lot of criticism as half of the mag was adverts, but also colour and much more glossy etc
He always defended it saying it was a necessary evil as ultimately he had to make it a commercial success.
Nostalgically I always had a soft spot for the old black and white version, but perhaps the bigger point is that after modernisation it is still going strong.

[Old bones Ian]

Hindsight is great, but no boxing mag or fight mag cottoned onto the power of the internet till too late.

[tony1234]

When Powerslam was published it was a month out of date, even Boxing News fight reports the following Thursday are old hat unlike 20/30 years ago where it was the only place to find the small hall results and fight news.

[Boxerbeetle]

When Powerslam was published it was a month out of date, even Boxing News fight reports the following Thursday are old hat unlike 20/30 years ago where it was the only place to find the small hall results and fight news.

True, but over the last 18 months or so Glyn had clearly steered Boxing Monthly away from news & fight reports - it's been focussing on interviews, features, fight analysis etc. No offence to any of the posters here, many of whom are incredibly knowledgeable & passionate, but there's just no replacement for reading an in-depth analysis written by a good professional boxing writer.

[Terminator666]

I hope BM keeps going but I too pmd Glyn about the quality of the paper suddenly changing for the worse but got no reply.

[chad]

When Powerslam was published it was a month out of date, even Boxing News fight reports the following Thursday are old hat unlike 20/30 years ago where it was the only place to find the small hall results and fight news.

True, but over the last 18 months or so Glyn had clearly steered Boxing Monthly away from news & fight reports - it's been focussing on interviews, features, fight analysis etc. No offence to any of the posters here, many of whom are incredibly knowledgeable & passionate, but there's just no replacement for reading an in-depth analysis written by a good professional boxing writer.

I agree, if that's what you've been brought up on and are used to. It just doesn't seem to appeal to the young new generation of boxing fans who are fixated with social media. I feel there's also been a decline in boxing forum interaction in the past couple of years. Sadly I think forums are a dying medium.

[Old bones Ian]

It does seem that people are happy with just being fed news constantly, rather than read a whole article or forum. Hence Twitter taking over from mags and forums.
There doesn't seem to be many youngsters on these forums

[moogie101]

Used to buy both every month, but stopped several years ago as often I was reading about things a month out of date. Often meant fights had been changed or cancelled in that time.

The internet with the speed & availability of news has to be a strong reason why.

[tobyh5]

The internet and the thirst for immediate information is to blame. Even daily newspapers are on the slide as by the time you have read the stories, it is old news with people expecting and wanting to know news within minutes of the event happening.

Additionally with the barrage of stories and information that hit us every minute of every day, we have less interest in stories as we hear about something, read about it then immediately lose interest and move on to the next story on our newsfeed. It is a rare event or news story that takes place that you still want to read more about it the next day let alone the next week or month, you have normally moved on to other things.

It will never change and circulation pays a small amount of the required revenue, it is down to advertising, that pays the bills. And advertising is reliant on response for repeat and regular custom which will only happen due to response v cost. If they get small or moderate response which will happen if readership is down then they will have to move away from it, especially when their other other faster mediums, cheaper that can hit a bigger audience and thus give a better potential return.

So circulation is down (less income), having to sell ads cheaper and getting less of them (less income) and then couple that with the increase in costs (print has risen a fair chunk in recent years) and it is tough.

I have owned a local weekly newspaper title for 15 years and trust me, it is getting tougher and tougher

[ILikeBeer]

Stopped reading Power Slam a few years back, as I don't really watch wrestling any more. Still got a load of my old magazines though. It was by far the best wrestling magazine out there.

[Kilburn]

After 18 years I've sadly packed in with Boxing News, it's gone off in a (presumably) inevitable direction that just doesn't suit me anymore.

The final straw was finding a complete lack of Steiglitz v Khomitsky fight report recently. If it doesn't even cover fights like that then the appeal is gone for me.

[Boxing Prospect]

After 18 years I've sadly packed in with Boxing News, it's gone off in a (presumably) inevitable direction that just doesn't suit me anymore.

The final straw was finding a complete lack of Steiglitz v Khomitsky fight report recently. If it doesn't even cover fights like that then the appeal is gone for me.

It does seem like boxing magazines are becoming less...international on the whole. If the magazine is from a specific country (Ring for the US, Britain for Boxing News) then it'll feature a lot from that country but little from outside that area. I remember seeing a miniscule result bit on Naoya Inoue beating Adrian Hernandez and wondering what Ring didn't give the bout more attention

[Crazyboy]

It does seem that people are happy with just being fed news constantly, rather than read a whole article or forum. Hence Twitter taking over from mags and forums.
There doesn't seem to be many youngsters on these forums

This for me, its a shame

[tobyh5]

With a limited number of pages available for viability I guess Boxing News is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If they devote the space to all the fight reports some people are expecting, it will come at the cost of features, interviews and other interesting and unique coverage. I guess it is not possible to have both a high amount of features and complete fight reports. Most of us have already seen the result and read a report and so Boxing News is becoming defunct for that purpose so it is surely not sensible as a business trying to maintain readership to include too much of the stuff people have read elsewhere, days earlier.

Clearly this has cost them a reader or two as this thread suggests but perhaps it has kept more other readers that enjoy the features but would stop reading if it was full of reports.

Both ways they lose readers, which one loses more?

[Kilburn]

With a limited number of pages available for viability I guess Boxing News is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If they devote the space to all the fight reports some people are expecting, it will come at the cost of features, interviews and other interesting and unique coverage. I guess it is not possible to have both a high amount of features and complete fight reports. Most of us have already seen the result and read a report and so Boxing News is becoming defunct for that purpose so it is surely not sensible as a business trying to maintain readership to include too much of the stuff people have read elsewhere, days earlier.

Clearly this has cost them a reader or two as this thread suggests but perhaps it has kept more other readers that enjoy the features but would stop reading if it was full of reports.

Both ways they lose readers, which one loses more?

I make you right on all that, hopefully for BN I'm in a tiny minority of people who still appreciated the "Every fight, every punch, every week" philsophy. Getting results from the internet and then waiting a few days to read the full report in BN suited me down to the ground. But it was only a matter of time before this became unrealistic.