Model Railroad Hobbyist: A Threat to MR?

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this is common practice for a lot of sites. Posting links to other competing sites is often not allowed.
 
Kalmbach is obviously well within their rights to do that, since they own the site. What interests me is the intensity and speed with which they're going after posts with MRH links in them. People post links about RMC all the time, and they don't bat an eyelash.

Apparently they don't view MRH as "just another competitor".
 
I hate it when this sort of stuff happens with forums. What are they "competing" for? Can't we all just get along? :)

I see this with car forums 'n stuff but Model Railroading? Crazy times we live in. :)

Mark
 
In truth is is a threat to MR. But they are not being blind-sided. Joe went to them first. What MRH represents is a paradigm shift. Print media cannot compete with interactive media any more than dime novels could compete with TV.

Change is inevitable. when you don't adapt, you falter. IBM did. Microsoft is only a few years away.
 
CSX_road_slug said:
Apparently the powers-that-be over at Kalmbach are getting quite nervous over the rapid ascent of Joe Fugate's new free online magazine, Model Railroad Hobbyist. They've been deleting any posts containing links to the MRH website within minutes after they appear on any of the Trains.com forums!
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/129
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I didn't notice many McCain signs waving during Obama's speech last night either, funny how things like that go. Yeah, it makes Kalmbach seem petty, but what else are they gonna do?

I run a list myself - the diesel modelers list. It isn't web based, or multimedia, and I don't allow attachments, pictures, or HTML. Some lists and forums do; if somebody joined my list and posted links to another list and started talking about how much better it was, I probably wouldn't delete the posts. But then again, I don't make my living off the diesel list.

I think how a company reacts to criticism is as important if not moreso than the issues being raised by the critics. I think Atlas is a great example of how to do it right, in that they permit discussions of competitors' products, and criticisms of their own - as long as the basic guidelines are followed.

But in recent years, I perceive that Kalmbach has taken the attitude of being above it all. They are still #1 by a wide margin. While their circulation has dropped, and their ad content has dropped measurably - so has everybody else's, and three of their competitors have closed their doors. There may be nothing they can do about the decline of the print media - other than blame it on some imagined decline in the hobby overall. "MR is dying" doesn't necessarily equate to "the hobby is dying". The hobby is changing, and MR isn't - at least not in the right direction. While I can understand MR's desire to push the RTR agenda, and that's what their advertisers want, they've been blowing off real modeling articles and authors and it shouldn't surprise them if they go somewhere else. If I love French onion soup, and my favorite restaurant decides to take it off the menu... or cheapen the recipe, they shouldn't be surprised if I go elsewhere when I'm wanting onion soup.

For decades, Kalmbach has been THE barometer of the hobby. No other indicator had even a fraction of the significance - and this is still the case. Even with both waning, MR's circulation borders on 8x to 10x the NMRA's membership, and is 3x that of it's nearest (and now only) competitor. They may still feel that online content is a small player, but that only proves they aren't paying attention and have no way of measuring it. I think manufacturers and publishers alike think of "the net" as a very small vocal minority, because you see the same names posting all the time. But there are thousands and thousands reading.

Andy
 
Technology is changing the way we get information. I love MR magazine. It's been a joy over the years but Joe is on the forefront of the changes coming. I wish him the best in his endevor. I see this as a PLUS for our hobby.
 


Wow! Joe has come a long way with his site. I had joined up way back when he first started all this, but forgot that password. Doesn't matter, I joined again. Joe's ambitious project seems destined for success and I certainly support his hard work and ideas. MR mag and others best "wake-up" or be left in the technology bone yard. This would not be a loss to me, since I dropped all mags two-years ago and found most everything I needed in cyberland. ;)
 
SpaceMouse said:
In truth is is a threat to MR. But they are not being blind-sided. Joe went to them first. What MRH represents is a paradigm shift. Print media cannot compete with interactive media any more than dime novels could compete with TV.

Change is inevitable. when you don't adapt, you falter. IBM did. Microsoft is only a few years away.
Click to expand...

There are, um, "venues" in my house where print media is still preferable to the laptop.
 
I think Bob could make a similar argument here to posting anything about MRH since they also have a forum and could be perceived as threat. The difference is that Bob's not as petty and I hope realizes that more electronic material available about model railroading is good for ALL model railroading sites.

Even though I read MRH, I will still come here just as often. It's no secret that I don't like MR or their forums but it has nothing to do with MRH. Model Railroading magazine has less and less content that makes it worth the price. The MR forums are tightly controlled for any sign of something Kalmbach thinks might be an economic threat yet they have made only slow and cursory efforts to control some of the most vicious postings from trolls of any site I've ever seen.

As has been said, Kalmbach isn't going out of business because I won't be renewing my subscription. They are, however, getting way behind the power curve on which way the hobby is going and they will go the way of the dodo bird if they don't get it soon.
 
We have a similar situation here with Railway Herald and the worldwide issue, it's coming along like you would not believe, well over a million hits a week is pretty good going, they are constantly upgrading and adding new servers to keep up with all the hits, the nearest railway magazine sells around 35 to 40 thousand hard copies a year for comparison
 


Ken, I did that once. I put the laptop on the back of toilet while I finished up business and you can probably guess what happened next. :eek: It's just paper for me now.
 
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