About magazines articles

During January, a message entitled “About magazines articles” appeared in a well known forum asking to members about the articles that specialized magazines should publish. There were a great many different opinions coming from forum members, authors…etc. And here, in this editorial, I transcribe word for word, my contribution to that message.

Friends, I apologize for interfering in this matter, but this topic always worries me… and keeps me awake.

Something to have into account, is that articles are written by modelers. I don’t think that there are modelers by trade, on the contrary, some modelers have made a profession from their hobby.

If you commission a work to an architect, then, there are clear regulations, techniques and guidelines, stated in books, which will be followed by everybody because the profession impose them, in spite of the different approaches to the matter, of course..

With regard to modeling, the situation is rather sui generis, you can commission 10 articles about a Tamiya Leclerc….and one will be completely different to each other, even the models; the final result could differ. This happens because there’s no “university” of modeling where to learn how to write good articles (neither is a need, this is just a comment as an example).

There are American magazines that have professional editors with a language degree and some knowledge of modeling, who correct and give shape to the articles. The final result is good, if you like the mass production, do you know what I mean?

Humbly, I believe that the hard work, should be accomplished by editors, stating clear guidelines to be followed of what we consider “a good modeling article”, and then, the author will try his best.

To do this, the editor has to familiarize himself thoroughly, with his main aim (besides of earning money, of course), keeping in contact with the authors, encouraging them, touching with them, explaining about the target, the editorial line…etc.

I guess I can read between lines, that everybody claims for a clear editorial line, that information is not published… as is!. Be sure, this is not always possible, but it’s important to make this quite clear.

In our humble virtual magazine, because it’s not more than that, a humble and low-budget magazine, we try our hardest; our “guru” Pato Delfosse manages to get good articles, to my understanding, some of them are excellent, following the editorial line that has been established previously, nevertheless, not always is it easy to get those wanted articles.