Weekly Autosport to cease publishing?

[TheDeuce]

moffspeed said:

I have been an avid reader of Autosport for 50 years or so, yes the mag is a pale, diluted shadow of its former self and printed media is on borrowed time, the recent bulking out with 'Performance" sections etc have been cringeworthy .. but Thursday wouldn't be Thursday without A'sport arriving on the hall floor...Interestingly my quarterly sub is approx. £35 and when I phoned yesterday I was told that this would be honoured for the foreseeable future - but at £11 a go the printed version is surely doomed.

Spare a thought also for "Motoring News" as it used to be called. As a kid I contributed race reports for them in the South Wales area i.e. Llandow. Before the 'net MN's classified section used to be the go-to place to buy your performance car, my first 3 "proper " cars - an Escort Mexico, RS2000 X pack and an Elan Sprint were all sourced from MN. Happy days.

RS2000

Gorgeous cars. Bet you wish you'd hung on to it now

[Derek Smith]

Eric Mc said:

Magazines for news have probably had it.

Magazines for specialist interests possibly still have some life left in them.

These 'specialist magazines'? Like to tell us more, Eric?

[TheDeuce]

Derek Smith said:

Eric Mc said:

Magazines for news have probably had it.

Magazines for specialist interests possibly still have some life left in them.

These 'specialist magazines'? Like to tell us more, Eric?

I haven't been so disturbed since vettel started the season with what was clearly a porno moustache.

[Eric Mc]

Derek Smith said:

Eric Mc said:

Magazines for news have probably had it.

Magazines for specialist interests possibly still have some life left in them.

These 'specialist magazines'? Like to tell us more, Eric?

Don't get too excited. In my case, it's "Aeroplane", Flypast" and "Scale Aircraft Modelling".

[DanielSan]

Derek Smith said:

Eric Mc said:

Magazines for news have probably had it.

Magazines for specialist interests possibly still have some life left in them.

These 'specialist magazines'? Like to tell us more, Eric?

Magazines have always been a terrible format for actual news, they were just the only format available until the relatively recent past. Mags now are a far better media for the more in depth none deadline necessary stories, group tests for example when it comes to car mags, or road trip type articles, I read mountain bike mags now mostly and they're surviving just fine without having to cover upto date news. Singletrack mag especially have the right idea of covering mostly ride/route features with their bi-monthly issues and just the one group test in each issue. The ride features are always more interesting to read than what bike is best anyway, I cant see why certain car mages cant follow a similar format and still thrive. The last few years in print media have just seen the death of sub standard products, and to a point that's no real loss to anyone imo.

[coppice]

Angling (coarse and game ) is my other lifelong passion in addition to cars and motorsport and almost exactly the same thing has happened to its press. We do have two weeklies but one of them is little more than advertorial and 90% of content is about the equivalent of F1 , carp (and one type of carp is even called F1! ). But the all rounder, well written magazine , catering for a wide range of interests died 20 years ago and , instead , the newsagents shelves groan under the weight of mags for single species - and as often as not they thin, dreadfully written and overpriced .

My theory is that most fishermen and most car folk now have the attention span of ants , and that's just the ones who don't move their lips when reading .

[Porsche guy]

Eric Mc said:

StevieBee said:

Eric Mc said:

I don't understand myself why some areas of interest seem to have had a magazine explosion over the pat few years and other areas are in decline.

Without wishing to lower tones, I am regularly surprised that many of the more 'adult orientated' titles prevail on the upper shelves.

I hadn't noticed - but that's because I can't see that high.

[moffspeed]

All very odd, this week’s edition carries the same page 3 “note to readers”. The “your say” page doesn’t publish any correspondence re the price rise but gives a short statement re the “number of e mails” received concerning this - “we will continue to share updates as early as we can “ (sic).

What is really odd is that the front cover features the BTCC rather than the Japanese GP . We know that it is F1 that sells Motorsport mags and I can’t think of a post GP week when A’sport hasn’t run an F1 themed front cover. The cynical might suggest it is an attempt to reduce sales and accelerate the demise of the printed version....

[eastlmark]

only 2 weeks without the mag and starting to feel about out of the loop... Anyone recommend an online source of motorsport news, national and club that isn't Autosport?

[DanielSan]

eastlmark said:

only 2 weeks without the mag and starting to feel about out of the loop... Anyone recommend an online source of motorsport news, national and club that isn't Autosport?

The motorsport website that owns Autosport, they post all the stories you'd have to pay to read on the AS website....

[Derek Smith]

eastlmark said:

only 2 weeks without the mag and starting to feel about out of the loop... Anyone recommend an online source of motorsport news, national and club that isn't Autosport?

For sports car racing, http://www.dailysportscar.com/ is brilliant. It is probably one of the reasons Autosport struggled.

[Ian Wegg]

I received an email this morning that was sent to the address I had registered with Autosport in 2014. It was pretty unpleasant but the filters caught it.

It seems the magazine's email data has been sold to spammers, I'd guess by an ex-employee.

[aeropilot]

moffspeed said:

Spare a thought also for "Motoring News" as it used to be called. As a kid I contributed race reports for them in the South Wales area i.e. Llandow. Before the 'net MN's classified section used to be the go-to place to buy your performance car, my first 3 "proper " cars - an Escort Mexico, RS2000 X pack and an Elan Sprint were all sourced from MN. Happy days.

Happy days indeed.

Always used to be 15 mins late for work on a Thursday morning (and then a Wednesday morning after they changed it) as 'needed' to wait for the bloody paper boy to deliver the papers so I could read Muttering Screws at lunchtime at work, and search the classifieds as well

I bought 2 of the 3 x RS2000's I had, plus a Mex, my Sunbeam Ti and lastly my Sunbeam-Lotus all through ads in Muttering Screws.

[FourWheelDrift]

https://twitter.com/autosport/status/1191374073693...

[Derek Smith]

eastlmark said:

only 2 weeks without the mag and starting to feel about out of the loop... Anyone recommend an online source of motorsport news, national and club that isn't Autosport?

I subscribe to Readly. It has Autosport on its lists, although I don't know for how much longer. Whilst it's interface is clunky and magazines come and go, it's save me a fair bit of money over time as I used to buy quite a few mags each month. The only regular for me now is Private Eye.