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Old 12th January 2018, 16:09
Bombphoon Bombphoon is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: UK
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Re: Declining quality of British aviation magazines

1) The main reason why books and magazines 'ain't what they used to be' is mainly due to the internet - and forums such as these! In the pre-digital age, forum posts and information would be submitted to magazines as either letters or articles. This has dropped off dramatically.

2) The lack of this revenue means publishers' budgets are far smaller, so they can afford fewer staff, new articles and photos - and they pay the journalists far less, meaning there is less incentive to put pen to paper.

3) Perhaps most concerning - and it's something few people seem to have noticed or mentioned - the public interest in WW2 has dwindled massively in the last 10 years or so.

This, I think, is due to several reasons, from veterans and the post-war generation of readers dying out, to younger generations having no connection to WW2 and so are just not interested in it - or, more worryingly, history itself. The digital age encourages the younger generation to look forward, not back into history.

If you doubt what I say, look at how few WW2 documentaries there are on TV nowadays compared to a decade ago: it even used to be staple diet for the cable history channels - it isn't now. Also, look at the UK's main military history publisher: they used to publish overwhelmingly WW1 and WW2: look at their website now and many of their books are now about buses, murders, trains, politics and local history.

Perhaps our subject has been 'done to death'?
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