About a year and a half ago, I dedicated a post to toast Popular Photography, a monthly magazine I had subscribed to for more than a decade during a period when I revived my interest in photography and sought to learn whatever I could and to have a resource to find gear and reviews.
Popular Photography had published its last edition a couple months prior to my post, leaving Shutterbug the only monthly print publication I could turn to for those needs I described.
But even more sadly, I recently learned that Shutterbug also has ceased printing a monthly magazine, though it will maintain an online presence. Like its counterpart, Shutterbug cited the costs of producing a monthly print product. It published its last print edition in May of this year. I was still an active subscriber, but in the past year, I had not been diligently looking at my magazines when they arrived, so I didn't even notice when they stopped coming ... until just the other day.
That's when I received my second copy of Outdoor Photographer, a magazine I hadn't subscribed to. I thought the delivery of the first copy (a month or so previous) was a fluke ... or perhaps a pitch to get me to subscribe, but I had ignored it and hadn't gotten around to opening it.
When the second Outdoor Photographer arrived the other day, the wheels upstairs started to turn, and I recalled how I started receiving Popular Science magazine in the mail immediately after Popular Photography stopped publication. The PP publishers did that to fulfill the remainder of my PP subscription. And then it occurred to me that I hadn't seen any new Shutterbugs for a while.
So I went online to hunt around, and sure enough ... I learned that the print Shutterbug magazine had gone the way of Popular Photography, and that it's final print edition (see lead-off photo) was published in May of this year. The online story announcing the shutdown emphasized that shutterbug.com will remain a viable entity; after Popular Photography ceased publishing, its owners said it would maintain an online archive of its editions, but frankly, I don't even know if that still exists.
I don't recall receiving a courtesy notice about Shutterbug ceasing publication like I did for PP, and I don't know if I'll warm to Outdoor Photographer like I did to PP and Shutterbug ... or even if it's what I want in a photography magazine. I'll give it a look-see, though.
But I admit that it concerns me: If two of my photo magazine faves faded away, does that bode ill for Outdoor Photographer?
No comments:
Post a Comment