Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Some open questions for Doc Searls

Author:Eric Kidd
Posted:5/1/1999; 8:11:49 AM
Topic:Linux' wide open spaces
Msg #:5507 (In response to 5408)
Prev/Next:5506 / 5508

The "however" is that writers, designers, artists and programmers are not going to be using Unix any time soon. I had a long talk about this with an old friend, Doc Searls, who's now a senior editor at Linux Journal. They're making the flipside mistake that many in the Mac/Windows world are making, forcing their editors to use Linux. Not a great idea!

This brings up some questions I've been wondering about recently. Since I know Doc Searls reads the discussion group from time to time, this seems like a good a place as any.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Linux Journal, it is (or was?) one of the best geek magazines currently available. In an age where Dr. Dobbs and Byte have utterly forsaken their technical roots, the LJ still publishes actual source code--in some issues, well over half the articles had sidebars with program fragments.

The articles are written by members of the Linux community. (The LJ's pay scale for writers is absurdly low, but nobody cares.) The LJ has ugly graphical design but great content. Editing has historically been so-so.

That was the state of the Linux Journal as of this fall. My subscription ran out, and I haven't seen any of the more recent issues.

The way I see it, the LJ has two choices: remain a technical magazine with a limited but enthusiastic readership, or completely alienate its current subscriber base and try to drum up readership among growing "non-programmer" segment of the Linux community.

So, my question for Doc Searls: What's the future of the Linux Journal? If you're going non-technical, I sincerely wish you luck. The Linux community needs a glossy, non-technical magazine, and it might even be profitable to publish one. Of course, most of your current subscribers will eventually desert you, so you'll have to make the transition quickly. Don't worry about technical folks, if you take this route--somebody else will publish a magazine for us to read.

If the LJ's going to remain a technical magazine, though, you'll have to become a hard-core Linux geek yourself. ;-) If you don't find it fun to spend long nights battling some obscure system gremlin, you'll have trouble relating to your current readers.

Cheers, Eric

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