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Journalism or public relations?

I don't think for a single moment that forums are a substitute for professional mags.The two activities are not even rivals....print magazines in general are thriving (newspapers less so. )But have you read 'Plus' recently?How much honest criticism do you see?And one result of that is that truly fine products get reviews very similar to more dubious products.No one could make a fair assessment on the basis of this puffery.And Roy Gregory, in reviewing two metres of cable at £21,000, mentions , as usual, Nordost.What he has never mentioned is that in the USA, Nordost has been reported as offering excllusive dealers mark-ups of 85%.That means for every $100 dollars the punter spends, $85 dollars goes straight to the dealer. As far as I know, Nordost have never denied this incredible pricing.Is the Uk pricing similar?And what about the mark ups on rival cables?Car mags routinely reveal the pricing structure of new cars, so how come audio journalists are so coy in denying their readers info freely available in other consumer goods?
I mention Gregory because after years of praising Nordost, he went to work for them, and is now back as an audio journalist.All open and above board.All entirely legal, but how about some open and energetic journalism on the side of the reader, who pays the bills.And as a lifetime member of the NUJ,I want mags to thrive, but they will only survive by re-injecting some guts and integrity into the process.Whatever their many faults, UK newspapers have often shown real guts in getting information into the public domain.Magazines do not have the resources or traditions to do this, but they could show a bit of spine.Their readership would increase, manufacturers would know that reviews had real value.It is tough to take such a path, but the audio mag which does it will prosper, not die.
 
I'd say your reaction indicates that you take magazines far too seriously, and literally.

Things have seldom been any different, certainly since the 1980s.
There were magazines where you could revel in universally nice things being written about high end 'big' American kit, or publications where the output of three uk manufacturers dominated not only every page but the opinion too. Things are arguably better today.

You can take all of these things literally or you can apply common sense and real world filters.

Do Roy's Nordost reviews have you racing to the nearest dealer to try a set, or do they invoke the reaction 'yeah right'?
 
I'd say your reaction indicates that you take magazines far too seriously, and literally.

Things have seldom been any different, certainly since the 1980s.
There were magazines where you could revel in universally nice things being written about high end 'big' American kit, or publications where the output of three uk manufacturers dominated not only every page but the opinion too. Things are arguably better today.

You can take all of these things literally or you can apply common sense and real world filters.

Do Roy's Nordost reviews have you racing to the nearest dealer to try a set, or do they invoke the reaction 'yeah right'?

I do think magazines should be treated as grown-up publications...if you regard them as little more than comics, you belittle them far more than any comments by me have.There have been superb bits of audio journalism, HiFi World under David Price was often rather fine.The long-gone 'The Listener' was often magnificent.Some of the work by Art Dudley in Stereophile is truly wise (read his comments on 'improvements to the Beatles re-issues.) If you want comics then fine, you will be well catered for, but good journalism is good for the journalist on the mags and is good for the rest of us.After all, you don't have to read it.You can call that pompous if you wish, but chasing quality is not the worst thing you can do.
 
I earned a living in journalism all my working life.I like and support audio mags, I try to understand the pressures they are under.No sensible person can assume that personal opinions will not colour a review.In the end these things are a matter of opinion, not rock-solid fact.

Given all that,I still have one question to ask of reviewers Alan Sircom and Roy Gregory. It is this:

In what ways can the assesments you offer to readers of 'HiFi Plus' be reliably distinguished from the writings of a public relations agency?

Any clues which help me make the distinction would be most welcome.

Put simply, if it were PR, I'd be earning a lot more!

In a way, magazines have become the public relations outlet for the audio industry, because that industry is facing an extinction crisis. It is too small and its voice too quiet to survive without a set of mouthpieces desperate to try and promote the business as best it can to keep it surviving for another year.

It is a position that I personally despise, and one I did not sign up for 25 years ago, but it's how things are right now.

The similarity to PR is that what we like, we have to love with the greatest passion known to man. The difference to PR (aside from the whole earning about half as much as I could if I went from gamekeeper to poacher) is that we choose the products we like, and ignore the ones we don't. PR people don't have that luxury in the main; if one of their clients delivers a so-so product, most of them will still deliver a hagiographic presentation of that thing. We at least have the ability to say 'no'.

We have - and will continue to run - less than favourable reviews of a product. But such things are comparatively rare now. We have a duty of care to our readers, but we also have a duty of care not to wreck a fine product with a merely 'good' review. And unfortunately, that's how the situation is today with regards to products.

We no longer have the power to 'make' a product, but have the power to break them all too easily. Whether its as a result of being staved of negative comment or just the written equivalent of Chinese Whispers is immaterial, but the end result is anything other than outright gushing praise for a product is read as damning indictment. I effectively created the myth of the Devialet being fussy about mains cables, and stopped a number of worldwide sales of the product dead because I mentioned that if you put an Apple MagSafe PSU on the same distribution block and pull it out (they spark almost every time you unplug one), it tripped the D-Premier's sleep mode. That's it. No power cable fussiness, no explosions, no clicks or pops, just an over-cautious protection mode, that went away with firmware 5.7. Similarly, I've buried products in the past by mistake. Including possibly the best preamp I ever used, simply because I thought it could have done with a balance control.

The question then becomes 'what use is a review?' In part, they are a hopefully entertaining method of putting several new products every month on the map, in a way that currently no other vehicle does in audio. Forum reviews, for example, are very trend-aware, but possibly too trend-aware (Karan Acoustics anyone? Even TeddyPardo is starting to wane in popularity here now). There is also a distinct skew in forum reviews away from the mainstream (because you've been there, done that years ago) that we continue to cover because forums are not the audio world entire.

I would prefer to be more direct in my writing, rather than talk in code. I wish I could comment on negatives without it being considered as pouring acid on the device under test. I would like to criticise, rather than simply drop the product altogether, or at best couch such criticisms as 'mere observation'.

But we live in a global world now, and the international world views UK reviews as being parochial to the point of xenophobia and often 'overly critical'.
 
You make his job ten times easier?

In a way, yes. We still provide visibility for the larger brands, as well as cover the smaller ones. The larger brands still have the fighting funds required to dominate the audio market. If the visibility goes away, the market gets smaller very quickly as a result. Those larger brands would just fight a turf war for business... and in any turf war, the first casualties are the little guys.
 
I think Alan Sircom's response is reassuringly direct and honest and I thank him for that.I probably personalised this a bit too much.It's also obvious that he has too much work to do,virtually running a magazine single handed.
I rather suspect, that like me, he spent his undergraduate years studying philosophy, a degree not famous for leading to highly paid jobs. Frankly,if a PR job would pay a lot more, why not just take it? You'd get more money and could probably work less hard.Anyway, I've said more than enough.
 
I do think magazines should be treated as grown-up publications...if you regard them as little more than comics, you belittle them far more than any comments by me have.There have been superb bits of audio journalism, HiFi World under David Price was often rather fine.The long-gone 'The Listener' was often magnificent.Some of the work by Art Dudley in Stereophile is truly wise (read his comments on 'improvements to the Beatles re-issues.) If you want comics then fine, you will be well catered for, but good journalism is good for the journalist on the mags and is good for the rest of us.After all, you don't have to read it.You can call that pompous if you wish, but chasing quality is not the worst thing you can do.

You can chase your idea of quality all you like but magazines have to survive, or you get nothing. They have to keep all sides reasonably happy.

I don't view any of them as comics.
 
I don't think for a single moment that forums are a substitute for professional mags.The two activities are not even rivals....print magazines in general are thriving (newspapers less so. )But have you read 'Plus' recently?How much honest criticism do you see?And one result of that is that truly fine products get reviews very similar to more dubious products.No one could make a fair assessment on the basis of this puffery.And Roy Gregory, in reviewing two metres of cable at £21,000, mentions , as usual, Nordost.What he has never mentioned is that in the USA, Nordost has been reported as offering excllusive dealers mark-ups of 85%.That means for every $100 dollars the punter spends, $85 dollars goes straight to the dealer. As far as I know, Nordost have never denied this incredible pricing.Is the Uk pricing similar?And what about the mark ups on rival cables?Car mags routinely reveal the pricing structure of new cars, so how come audio journalists are so coy in denying their readers info freely available in other consumer goods?
I mention Gregory because after years of praising Nordost, he went to work for them, and is now back as an audio journalist.All open and above board.All entirely legal, but how about some open and energetic journalism on the side of the reader, who pays the bills.And as a lifetime member of the NUJ,I want mags to thrive, but they will only survive by re-injecting some guts and integrity into the process.Whatever their many faults, UK newspapers have often shown real guts in getting information into the public domain.Magazines do not have the resources or traditions to do this, but they could show a bit of spine.Their readership would increase, manufacturers would know that reviews had real value.It is tough to take such a path, but the audio mag which does it will prosper, not die.

Er, Roy has not been allowed to write about cables, tables, power products, cones or anything either related to Nordost (or rival to any product Nordost has ever made) since he announced he was working for Norodst in 2009. Although he no longer works for the company, he is still not allowed to write about those products for Hi-Fi+.

Roy didn't write that review. I wrote that review, on Crystal Cable Absolute Dream. I wrote it because I consider them so good, they make other cables seem identical to one another and as such it allows me to bow out of reviewing cables. If you want to view that cynically, then they are so expensive, they make the difference between spending £10 and £1,000 on cables immaterial, and that makes it impossible for me to retain perspective on £10 or £1,000 cables, and as such it allows me to bow out of reviewing cables. Either way, that's a great thing for me, because I am utterly sick and tired of having a frigging target painted on me every time I open my laptop.

I'm done with that. Someone else gets that monkey on their back. They asked not to have their real name printed, because they fear hate mail, but it ain't Roy Gregory. So, I'm provisionally calling them Ted Bellingham. Some may see the humour in that.

AFAIK, car magazines, camera magazines, gadget magazines and everyone else doesn't tend to disclose trade prices too often (if at all), because it backfires. Here's an easy one - the £500 TV set nets the bricks and mortar dealer around five points at the moment. If the same dealer also sells a £100 swing arm wall-mount, they make between forty and fifty points. In other words, the dealer stands to make £25 on the telly and £50 on the stand. What I've just done is made everyone here who's about to buy a TV and a wall bracket try and screw down the dealer for getting the £500 TV for maybe £480 and the wall-bracket for £60. Or worse. It's always been that way - if you tell the world that the bill of materials on a Porsche is £6,000, people will get angry at paying £60,000 for their new Porsche. Precisely the same thing applies in audio.

And if you're NUJ, you probably know all too well that the readers don't pay the bills... the advertisers do. The readers just about pay for the cost of there being readers.
 
I think Alan Sircom's response is reassuringly direct and honest and I thank him for that.I probably personalised this a bit too much.It's also obvious that he has too much work to do,virtually running a magazine single handed.
I rather suspect, that like me, he spent his undergraduate years studying philosophy, a degree not famous for leading to highly paid jobs. Frankly,if a PR job would pay a lot more, why not just take it? You'd get more money and could probably work less hard.Anyway, I've said more than enough.

Because I am not an Old Dolphin, I'm not aged 24, I don't look good in a mini-skirt, I don't have an almighty coke habit, and I don't have a name like Chlamydia Ffrydge-Magnett.

But... you're spot on about the philosophy bit.
 
Alan,

In a way, magazines have become the public relations outlet for the audio industry, because that industry is facing an extinction crisis.
People like to target foo as the reason audio is in decline, but I seriously doubt that either fringy weirdo hi-fi or fringy weirdo hi-fi publications killed the entire industry.

What do you see as the main culprits?

Joe
 
Alan,


People like to target foo as the reason audio is in decline, but I seriously doubt that either fringy weirdo hi-fi or fringy weirdo hi-fi publications killed the entire industry.

What do you see as the main culprits?

Joe

Joe, without a doubt the hifi press has to take responsibility for making hifi hobbyists look like idiots. Well, maybe not entirely........maybe there are a few idiots to be taken advantage of. I am so confused......

Louballoo
 
Lou,

Do you think John Q Public could name a single hi-fi magazine? It's not a rhetorical question.

Joe
 
Lou,

Do you think John Q Public could name a single hi-fi magazine? It's not a rhetorical question.

Joe

Or any magazine catering to a hobby, be it trains, aircraft, woodwork et all.

Coming back to Alan's killing a product stone dead because of a less than positive review (or even a throw away comment on a power board) I once edited an Audio club news letter and in one issue I mentioned how good a certain combination of CD player, Amp and speakers were sounding in a shop I had visited while on holiday. Unknown to me this newsletter did the rounds of another group in another city, members of which, I found out years later, went out and bought the said combo, or parts of it, on the strength of my comments!
I found this quite sobering and understand Alan's sense of responsibilty as a reviewer/critic perfectly.
Errol.
 
In a way, magazines have become the public relations outlet for the audio industry, because that industry is facing an extinction crisis. It is too small and its voice too quiet to survive without a set of mouthpieces desperate to try and promote the business as best it can to keep it surviving for another year..

That is a really poor argument for collusion. You seem to have forgotten who your customers are.

Had it not occurred to you that the industry needs a bit more honesty in it, and it precisely your sort of behaviour that gives it a bad name?
 
Joe, without a doubt the hifi press has to take responsibility for making hifi hobbyists look like idiots. Well, maybe not entirely........maybe there are a few idiots to be taken advantage of. I am so confused......

Louballoo

Yes, especially when the modders/hobbyists are the ones creating the innovation, e.g.. DR power supplies which Naim copied.... :rolleyes:
 
In a perfect world, all journalists would be 100% objective and deliver unbiased opinions all the time. However in our imperfect, commercially-driven world, I think it would be unrealistic to expect this all the time of journalists covering any industry, not just hifi. They simply cannot afford to bite the hands that feed them, at least not often.

But to accuse them of lacking in integrity or colluding with manufacturers is too harsh. I believe the majority of reviews in any hifi mag are as honest as the writers can make them, given the constraints.
 
I said i'd drop out because I had my say.But allow me to pick up a few issues noted by Mr Sircom. I did indeed wrongly attribute a cable review to Gregory rather than the real author, Alan Sircom.Apologies for that.But how about the magazine dealing with the issue of some truly remarkable bits of pricing.Is it true that Nordost offers deals in which up to 85 per cent of the price, before tax, is dealer profit? (at least in the USA). Does Mr Sircom think such pricing should be hidden from his readers? Would that be 'collusion' between industry and hifi press? As for Mr Sircom's comment that advertisers pay for magazines, not the public, who pays for the advertising? The readers by buying the mags, because without the readers there are no adverts .There is a very simple point here......successful journalism, newspaper,magazines, radio or tv, all rely totally on a successful bond between journalists and their public.Lose that, and you have nothing left to sell.And the betrayal of that principle, in national newspapers, or in hobby magazines, is always fatal.Hi Fi plus would do well to always remember...it's the readers,...it's the readers
They are all there is..
 


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