Open letter to SCUBA Diving magazine

[dmoore19]

I like Undercurrent.

 

[JamesK]

My favorites are Tech Diving Mag, Advanced Diver Mag, South Florida Dive Journal, and Underwater Speleology.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Sport Diver is even worse! Once a year they bring out their Diving Resorts special issue which has exactly the same resorts in it as the one from last year. DANs Alert Diver is surely worth it but over all there is a need for a serious scuba publication.

 

[Eff]

Alert Diver, Wetnotes, and X-Ray magazine (all on iPad) are my personal favorites.

 

[Rich Keller]

I stopped subscribing to dive magazines a long time ago. Even when there was good content it seemed to be the same content over and over again after a while. I do pickup one from a news stand once in a great while and have not seen anything that would change my mind.

 

[deeper thoughts]

This issue was pretty bad

 

[drbill]

Who has time to read about diving? I Dive too much.

Seriously, I gave up on the magazine years ago. I thought that the gear reviews were useful back when my friend Jon Hardy was in charge but they declined after his untimely death. I do find Alert Diver to be a good magazine and occasionally read Dive Training as well.

 

[dmoore19]

Maybe they were all at DEMA and didn't have time?

 

[covediver]

Lots of dive mags have come and gone over the years, I have written from time to time for a number of them. Underwater USA and California Diving News, started in the 1980s, were among my favorites with their mixture of news, announcements, and features in a tabloid format. Recently, I bemoaned the demise of California Diver, a magazine for which I had real hopes for their success. Alert Diver is about as good as they come since Steve Frink took over, before that it was a very ho-hum but solid publication. Media tastes are changing. Flagship magazines like Newsweek are no longer published in print format. Remember when Skin Diver was the dominant magazine? They never met an advertiser they didn't kowtow to with favorable reviews opposite the full page advertisement. I recall how they were criticized for accepting page after page of advertising from "mail order" dive shops. It seems all very quaint, yet very familiar, in today's world of on-line dive shops versus brick and mortar stores.