Why is track/field news $43.95/year?

Because they need to make money somehow.

all those other mags are heavily funded by advertising

not true for TnF News

Why are the other mags more than $12.00 per year?

Because people will pay it. bible of the sport? My arse!

but on the other hand, would people pay more than $12.00 for Runner's world?

The finances of all publications are driven far more by advertising than by anything else. T&FN is apparently incapable of selling ad space to the same extent that RW, RT, or other such mags are.

Standard practice in the publishing world is to have a very small staff and fill the pages with freelance work ("outsourcing" for those in industry). T&FN does not adhere to this for whatever reason (have you ever seen Kenny Moore write for them?), so we're not only paying for bad salesmen but bad management.

I think T&FN is a terrible magazine, written by terrible writers. Maybe it wasn't always that way, but it is now. Its only use to me is as a results booklet, and unfortunately they have a corner on the US market. So I smile and bite it and send them my $44 a year.

BECAUSE RW IS TERRIBLE AND SO THEY WANT TO CHARGE A SERIOUS AMOUNT FOR SERIOUS PEOPLE...THEY COULD CORNER THE MARKET SEEING AS RW IS MORE LIKE A COMIC BOOK THAN A INTELLIGENT PUBLICATION

j squire wrote:

Its only use to me is as a results booklet, and unfortunately they have a corner on the US market. So I smile and bite it and send them my $44 a year.

With the 'net, you can get the results of most any meet or race long before T&FN publishes it.

I'll repost this here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2715377380&category=2913

Buy this. I did and it's worked out well. You pay $18 for the full year of TnF News the only catch is the subscrption takes 60 days to start, but you still get 12 issues.

trackhead,

it looks like that same seller has a two-year subscription to Running Times available for $9.99.

thanks for the link.

I don't get it - why aren't apples and oranges priced the same?

You get any *good* cycling mags? All the decent ones cost a minimum of $35 a year and some are considerably more. T&FN and other niche mags (VeloNews, CycleSport) can't get the same $$ from advertisers that someone like RW or Bicycling can.

I also love the weekly newsletter you get from T&FN much better than any of the big mags or even the cycling mags.

yeah, you can get some really great deals via eBay.

And the last time you saw Kenny Moore write for any publication was...... when?

"I think T&FN is a terrible magazine, written by terrible writers."

Dude, you must have a personal beef with them or something. The writing is top notch. Sure, some of it is out of date by the time it arrives, but they've been changing to less news recently. Also, with a sub you get Track Newsletter free evey week on e-mail. It's the best results service available.

T&FN caters to short sprints and field events.

I occasionally go to the library and read the 1 or 2 pages about real running, but not often.

Actually the library discontinued it about 10 years ago, due to lack of interest, and I got them to continue.

Even so, there's not much there for real runners.

They don't cater to the short sprints. If anything, they're "biased" toward distance running. But if you're only into distance running, and not track & field as a sport, I'm sure you'd feel about any publication that tries to cove the sport in its entirety.

Real runners? You think they should waste time covering the back of the pack stuff like Runner's World? And I mean back of the back to include 15-minute 5K runners.

If they didn't cover any men running slower than 15 minutes for a 5k, that would greatly improve the coverage.

Most of their coverage is about joggers who can't run around the track two times.

TFN subscriber wrote:

"I think T&FN is a terrible magazine, written by terrible writers."

Dude, you must have a personal beef with them or something. The writing is top notch. Sure, some of it is out of date by the time it arrives, but they've been changing to less news recently. Also, with a sub you get Track Newsletter free evey week on e-mail. It's the best results service available.

Your use of the word "dude" proves you wouldn't know good writing if it bit you. eTN is quite literally the ONLY reason I still get the rag. A re-hash of meet results in prose makes up at least 75% of the magazine, and that's as dull as dirt when you've already seen the meet on TV. If they were actually journalists, they'd write something in-depth (besides one-page interviews which always boil down to "I train a lot, and I play video games").

I do have a personal beef, but that's beside the point. Garry Hill is remarkably self-absorbed, even by West Coast standards. He banned someone from their board for no other reason than proving GH wrong about an East German's admission of drug use. They have always abdicated their leadership on the drug issue, too -- they pretty much think the worst thing about drugs is that people get caught sometimes.

j squire wrote:

I do have a personal beef, but that's beside the point. Garry Hill is remarkably self-absorbed, even by West Coast standards. He banned someone from their board for no other reason than proving GH wrong about an East German's admission of drug use. They have always abdicated their leadership on the drug issue, too -- they pretty much think the worst thing about drugs is that people get caught sometimes.

Great. So you have a personal beef. Don't subscribe.