Dear SCUBA Diving Magazine,
Oh, how I used to look forward to seeing your magazine in my mailbox. Your photographs were mesmerizing, the articles about dive destinations, wrecks, and sea life compelling, and the regular columns (always a fan of "lessons for life") a must-read. Remember your article about the Oriskany? It made me want to book a flight right then.
Sure, your equipment reviews have always been a bit too Pollyanna -- I don't think you've ever said a negative word about any piece of equipment -- but I understand the need to placate your advertisers.
Things started to slip a couple years ago. All your cover photos went black-and-white and looked the same. Your articles got shorter and often skipped key details like the maximum and average depth of the wreck you were reviewing. You introduced this weird star-graph in your product reviews that was meaningless, where every product had the exact same features and a blob-like asterisk that tried to relay quantitative information to the reader without pissing off your advertisers. You got rid of the cute model that tried on all your wetsuits. I miss her.
While you've gotten rid of the asterisk-graphs and started publishing color photographs again, your Jan/Feb 2013 has reached an all-time low.
There isn't any content! When I say that, I mean it: there is almost NOTHING worth looking at in this issue. It's your "reader's choice awards" issue, which seems that you took this as an excuse to give your writers a couple months off so you could recycle stock photos and list the same bunch of places and one-paragraph (or shorter) descriptions we've all seen many times before in your magazine.
You skipped the columns: no "Lessons for Life" (the one thing you KNOW we enjoy reading), and Letters to the Editor (you don't even have to write that yourself) was so small and short I almost missed it.
The product reviews were adequate, I'll give you that. The new Aeris full-foot travel fins look pretty interesting.
But I'm giving up on SCUBA Magazine. I just can't bring myself to renew a magazine that doesn't even seem to be trying. While I want to support an industry that needs every subscriber dollar it can get, I draw the line at paying for a magazine full of ads and recycled content and little else.
Sincerely yours,
Crispix, former SCUBA magazine subscriber
P.S.
Have you ever read an issue of DAN's "Alert Diver"? It's a fantastic magazine. The articles are long, varied, always from an expert in his/her field, always a unique topic, and full of details and photographs. I recommend!
Oh, how I used to look forward to seeing your magazine in my mailbox. Your photographs were mesmerizing, the articles about dive destinations, wrecks, and sea life compelling, and the regular columns (always a fan of "lessons for life") a must-read. Remember your article about the Oriskany? It made me want to book a flight right then.
Sure, your equipment reviews have always been a bit too Pollyanna -- I don't think you've ever said a negative word about any piece of equipment -- but I understand the need to placate your advertisers.
Things started to slip a couple years ago. All your cover photos went black-and-white and looked the same. Your articles got shorter and often skipped key details like the maximum and average depth of the wreck you were reviewing. You introduced this weird star-graph in your product reviews that was meaningless, where every product had the exact same features and a blob-like asterisk that tried to relay quantitative information to the reader without pissing off your advertisers. You got rid of the cute model that tried on all your wetsuits. I miss her.
While you've gotten rid of the asterisk-graphs and started publishing color photographs again, your Jan/Feb 2013 has reached an all-time low.
There isn't any content! When I say that, I mean it: there is almost NOTHING worth looking at in this issue. It's your "reader's choice awards" issue, which seems that you took this as an excuse to give your writers a couple months off so you could recycle stock photos and list the same bunch of places and one-paragraph (or shorter) descriptions we've all seen many times before in your magazine.
You skipped the columns: no "Lessons for Life" (the one thing you KNOW we enjoy reading), and Letters to the Editor (you don't even have to write that yourself) was so small and short I almost missed it.
The product reviews were adequate, I'll give you that. The new Aeris full-foot travel fins look pretty interesting.
But I'm giving up on SCUBA Magazine. I just can't bring myself to renew a magazine that doesn't even seem to be trying. While I want to support an industry that needs every subscriber dollar it can get, I draw the line at paying for a magazine full of ads and recycled content and little else.
Sincerely yours,
Crispix, former SCUBA magazine subscriber
P.S.
Have you ever read an issue of DAN's "Alert Diver"? It's a fantastic magazine. The articles are long, varied, always from an expert in his/her field, always a unique topic, and full of details and photographs. I recommend!
