RSSA fond farewell to Computer Shopper in print
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published February 27, 2009, 6:14 PM
This is not, so thankfully, the story of the passing of a great publication. Computer Shopper is not going away; in fact, its latest owners at SX2 Media Labs have some plans to expand the brand, while keeping its classic look and feel. I'd actually go so far as to say that SX2 is finally doing with Computer Shopper what its previous two owners failed to comprehend how to do, and its first owner could only dream of.
But a chapter has closed in the history of this great publication, and it's a personal one for me, and I'll say more about that in a bit. This week, in a memo to his employees obtained by PaidContent.org, SX2 CEO David Sills announced that the April 2009 issue would be the last bound edition of the US version of Computer Shopper.
"We did not make this decision lightly," Sills wrote. "Computer Shopper has a 30-year history as the most comprehensive guide to technology. Over the years, we evolved into a respected, world-class destination for trusted buying advice and reviews. Our readers demand expert, labs-based reviews of the latest technology products, delivered in a timely fashion, free of bias. This remains our editorial mission, and with our pure-digital focus, we'll be able to deliver on it better than ever. And with ComputerShopper.com's position of also being a prominent comparison-shopping engine for technology products, we will continue to deliver to our readers a unique mix of buying advice and shopping access."
To say that Computer Shopper evolved over 30 years' time is to say human civilization is susceptible to change, or that oceans are prone to undulation. It never sounded like it could be the driving force in information technology publishing, with a name that never changed from the days it was printed on cheap, yellow recycled newsprint and handed out for next-to-nothing in Florida's convenience stores.
But the Shopper met an unstoppable force of nature, a man who could walk alongside Gen. Patton at any time of World War II and feel right at home: a tough-talking, headstrong, skeet shooting former computer store owner named Stan Veit. It was Stan who had the brilliant idea (one of many) that as long as this publication was already chock full of ads, why not add some articles to it? (One of Stan's other great ideas was to decline Jobs' and Wozniak's offer to invest in 10% of Apple Computer for $10,000, a decision Stan to this day never regrets.)
You have to understand how extraordinarily rare and brilliant this opportunity was. Perhaps every other editorially produced magazine on the planet is burdened with the problem of pulling in advertisers, and creating features with the dual purpose of attracting readers and appealing to advertisers who want...that certain reader. But for the better part of five years, we were given an extraordinary gift: a publication that was guaranteed to outsell Penthouse, Playboy, and TV Guide on the newsstands because people bought it for the ads. Never again may this opportunity be realized in the Web era.
And those of us who wrote for the original Shopper were given the mandate to write what we truly believed was interesting, the longer the better. It's that last part that, I suppose, made me special in the organization: Though I was originally contracted in 1986 to write copy for the Atari section, I often digressed, writing essays the size of book chapters that masqueraded thinly as product reviews. "The Next Operating System: Some New Ideas" was a classic.
Stan Veit didn't always read through my "classics," though he did experience them by way of "reader response." In fact -- a young tech writer's rite of passage -- I received my first death threat through Shopper. I still lovingly keep it to this day, along with the yellow Post-It tacked to the front of it that reads, in his endearing style, "Scotty: Stay out of Texas. -Stan."
In the era before the Web, at one time, the Shopper as a magazine was a key instrument in digital communication. Every month, it printed a long and updated list of BBS numbers (bulletin board systems, for all you young'uns), which may have single-handedly doubled the revenue of local phone companies.
Alfred Poor, who wrote the Computer Cures column and other features for the Shopper for a total of 13 years, recalled for me today: "One of my favorite early features was the listing of BBS sites. They would come and go from month to month. It's hard to think of dialing into each separate site, but that's essentially what we did back then. I also loved the huge ads from the DIY computer parts stores; I used to pore over them trying to figure out how to build the computer I wanted at the price I could afford. (Lots of dreaming, not much ordering.)"
One of the last caretakers of the BBS section of the old Shopper was our very own Angela Gunn. In fact, most everyone who's contributed in a great way to the literary quality of computing (my friends Esther Schindler and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols come to mind) were Shopper veterans. Believe it or not, I helped run the Macintosh section at one time. (There are Betanews readers who would shudder at that thought today.)
But my very fondest memory of working with Patch Publishing, the original owners, was of being the first co-moderator (with Ted Drude) of the Shopper's very first online magazine venture: the Computer Shopper Information Exchange (C*SIX), the single worst-named online venture ever. It's the spirit of that part of the publication which still lives on at ComputerShopper.com.
And the reason I can almost ensure that the new owners' venture will thrive is because Stan Veit -- to this day, considered Editor-in-Chief Emeritus -- is a regular contributor to its forums, as the publication's chief historian. The soul of the Shopper is alive and well. Okay, so it can't be used any more as a booster seat for small children. But as long as Stan's there, Computer Shopper -- that evolutionary marvel -- is very much alive.
[ME's Note: At Stan Veit's urging, I wanted to make clear that Glenn Patch was the founder and original owner of Computer Shopper, while Stan was it's original Editor-in-Chief.]
I got to write the "Hard Edge" with Bill O'Brien for 13 years. It was the best writing gig of my life and something I miss every month to this day. Before I left to work on then-fledgling start-up CNET.com, I was editor of Shopper's Tech Section and Sr,. Editor of the Features for Shopper in New York. Stan would mail me priceless manuals and magazines. He was such a source for the history of this wonderful industry.
--Alice Hill
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|So here's a silly question...
When will all of those folks stupid enough to subscribe to the publication be notified? And how, as an enmail is not a necessary prerequisite to subscribe?
Oh....
Or would planning ahead and not accepting subscriptions for hard copy for a period prior to the transition have made sense and come dangerously close to being responsible?
But I guess in the midst of such glowing accolades, the concept of responsible and ethical business practices where commitments to those they accepted money from and the fulfillment of the terms that were agreed upon is a bit passe.
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|I am willing to bet they have (or will have) a termination (and probably a refund) plan in place for customers that are subscribing to the periodical. Mind you, this was just announced internally this week, so any public details regarding refunds and such are probably not yet released.
Also, how is this decision classified as irresponsible or non-ethical? There have been no announcements as to the status of current subscribers and refunds that may or may not be issued (given that they are talking about terminiating the print publication, I can only assume that the print readership is dreadfully low).
Isn't your comment just a bit of a case of putting the cart before the horse?
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|Absolutely not!
First of all, the subscribers are the major stakeholders here, and the ones who have paid.
No one at the mag simply woke up the other morning and said - oh, let's just shut this thing down. It has been in the works for awhile - either as a concept or a distinct possibility. Neither by design or by financial necessity. NONE of it happened overnight.
To that end, it would have been SIMPLE and easy to simply state for new subscribers that the terms were for a print version, but to be aware that the format may change to an electronic version. If that was unacceptable for whatever reason, subscribers make the decision with their eyes open. Such a radical concept for an industry that has been looking at declining subscribers for YEARS now.
And as far as refunds. Right. LMAO!
From whom? The majority of subscriptions are handled by subscription services, not the publisher's themselves. And many of the subscriptions are from multi-year deals. So just who do the subscribers chase around? Some middle man who has been compromised by the publisher? Or the publisher who will simply say that one has to contact the subscription service?
And ironically, no notice has been sent to any subscriber - at least not one that has arrived.
And since an email is not a prerequisite for obtaining a subscription, exactly how are they planning to psychically obtain them if they are planning to continue distributing it electronically? Or have they hired Dionne Warwick to resurrect her Psychic Hotline?
So, just how is it handled on Earth as opposed to Uranus?
You are sent by the Computer Shopper subscription service to the service bureau, who then says you must contact the individual agent who sold the subscription. No person is available at the service – it is totally automated and any attempt to exception out results in disconnection. And their number is not in service.
And of course, if the subscriber base was so dreadfully low, all the more reason to screw over the idiots who did subscribe.
So much for your "viable… termination (and probably a refund) plan in place for customers that are subscribing to the periodical."
The only ones screwed here are the subscribers who made the publication viable to begin with.
So, do tell us about that cart and the horse…
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|I bought my first PC in 1990 after poring over issues of Computer Shopper for 6 months. I can't think of a better compliment to give.
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|I have some old Shoppers keeping my easy chair from rocking back too far, supporting a shaky work bench, etc. Their just the perfect width, and the weight is distributed over a large area. No question, this was THE computer publication of the 90's. That was the best $4 you could spend. One of our proudest moments around here was getting our BBS listed with CS. Loved the articles, totally on par with any other slick-paper mag of the time (or current). The Hard Edge was great :) The only reason I stopped buying CS was for the same reason I stopped buying all print media - economics. Print periodicals have been priced right out of their traditional role as portable, affordable entertainment and information. Its pretty sad, actually, but I suppose that in time e-book technology will become cheap and connected enough that everyone will have it. Maybe we'll see a resurgence of the subscription-based periodical in this form. I'd pay a couple bucks each month for a king-sized electronic Computer Shopper! Of course, if the economy keeps going south, we may well end up where we started..with recycled newsprint editions being the only kind available.
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|I remember a guy who tried to hawk Computer Shopper at early microcomputer trade shows. Started out as a thin mag, and then got HUGE, and then worked its way back down to a thin mag. Haven't seen him in a long time, but he sure had an impact on the growing industry.
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|Ah I remember when you could club a mammoth with a Computer Shopper... always one of my favorite publications. CS was my partner on a great number of home-build PC projects. I'll miss the nostalgia of the hefty print edition... and wish them the best of luck in their new incarnation! Long Live Computer Shopper!
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|Yeah I remember OH so well the days of the phone book sized issues of Computer Shopper. It was one of the 3 mags I read religiously (parts and BBS#'s were the best) .
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|BTW, there's no Wikipedia entry for Stan Veit, which doesn't seem right, somehow. You might be an excellent candidate to start one, Scott.
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|Yep, Jobs was always an ass. Good link. Veit was a wise man.
Oh well. Cheers to a new and exciting chapter of Computer Shopper. My nostalgic side will miss those behemoth publications. I still have quite a few from the late-80s on up, mixed in with my COMPUTE!'s Gazette collection.
Thanks for the use of the way-back machine, Scott and Angela. ;-)
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|Computer Shopper was awesome in the days of dialup, when eshopping was too slow to do any research online, you had to already know exactly what you wanted to buy. Now, with broadband, it is as redundant and unneeded as the Sears catalog. All print publications will soon follow it into oblivion as broadband becomes universal and portable.
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|I read the Computer Shopper religiously, but with internet shopping their prices were usually 2~3 months late, consequently so were any deals.
Ziff-Davis was an innovator, now they just seem late, and out of touch.
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|Heavens, that's right -- you were on the Mac beat back in the day! (I really enjoyed the part just now where a couple of our regular commenters' heads exploded, by the way.) I was on the online-services beat during the transition from a multitude of online services to just three important ones -- AOL, CIS, Prodigy -- plus the Web, with clear indications by the end of my tenure (1995) that CompuServe and Prodigy were fading fast into statis and irrelevance.
And you bet it was fun. Even if you couldn't cram the $()@(! mag into any reasonably sized bookbag. What a hoot...
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|Heh. I'm happy to be back with one of the UK's first ISPs, Demon.
They've gone back to being reasonably priced and mostly reliable.
I miss the old dial-up noise, that's for sure.
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|Friend of mine found a sound file of a modem negotiating its dial-up connection and used it as his mobile-phone ringer for a while. Funny until it was maddening.
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|Oh gosh. That's right you did do the Atari section way back in pre-Ziff-history. I'd forgotten that.
Steven
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|PC Mag did the same thing. I didn't renew. When I can get a monitor in the restroom I'll let you know :P
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|I spent many an hour perusing the pages of the Computer Shopper looking for parts deals or a local bulletin board.
It also came in hand as a door stop when needed.
Ah, the old days!
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