Pop Photo: RIP

[dasmith232]

I think that many people these days may not care. For others like me, there are certain classic elements of growing up and nostalgia. For those of us that remember names like Herb Kepler and Michael McNamara, this might be a little bit of sad news.

Without much of a (formal) warning, and with no official "last" issue, the 80 year old magazine Popular Photography is no more.

 

[smoke665]

As a former publisher of a regional chain of weekly newspapers, it makes me sad. I can remember when people hung on to print media, they read and re-read articles, clipped articles to save for later, and gleaned every bit of information from them before they were thrown away. Now the digital age with it's instant communication, and the 24/7 reality news shows, has made the printed newspaper/magazine a dinosaur.

 

[dasmith232]

...Now the digital age with it's instant communication, and the 24/7 reality news shows, has made the printed newspaper/magazine a dinosaur.

... and nearly as instant to forget things that we just read.

 

[Designer]

As a former publisher of a regional chain of weekly newspapers, it makes me sad. I can remember when people hung on to print media, they read and re-read articles, clipped articles to save for later, and gleaned every bit of information from them before they were thrown away. Now the digital age with it's instant communication, and the 24/7 reality news shows, has made the printed newspaper/magazine a dinosaur.

In my experience, each magazine's articles were repetitive, so after a few years of hanging on their every word, flagging articles, clipping ads, and saving all the back issues, and seeing essentially the same thing over and over again, I stopped buying them.

 

[smoke665]

@Designer reading, clipping, saving repetitive information is not something anyone wants to do. Any business, which fails to provide a timely product for their customers, will soon find themselves out of business. Sadly that's something that tends to plague an older business rather than a younger.

 

[table1349]

Fortunately our Daily Rag here was smart enough to jump on the digital bandwagon early and deeply. They are in journalistic terms still going strong.

 

[smoke665]

@gryphonslair99 one of the papers I had, went out of business a couple of years after I sold the company. One of the papers was absorbed by another of the papers in the group, another paper was absorbed by the daily in the group. Then the daily absorbed all of them. Then the daily was absorbed by another chain, and converted to a bi-weekly. Advertising is what makes the wheels run, and unfortunately small papers just can't compete. However, the most recent move has taken a good daily serving a community for many years and turned it into a shell of what it once was, effectively serving no one. I suspect that it's only a matter of time before it fades away completely. In the past local newspapers topped tv/internet because they offered a good serving of local news. Pictures of the home town boys in sports, weddings, obituaries, births, local events, all kept the subscriptions paid. Over the last several years, that business model changed, to one of an advertising supplement. Just one more piece of junk mail.

 

[Derrel]

Sad to see Pop Photo go. I subscribed multiple times off and on over a 30-plus-year span, first in the mid-to-late 1970's as a boy; later in the late 1980's and early 1990's; agakin in the mid-2000's, and then most recently from 2012 until 2016. I JUST moved this past week, and before I did so I recycled several years' worth of Pop Photo and Shutterbug magazines.

I wish I had known they were not long for this world: I might have saved a few issues as remebrances. I DID save the Nikon D2x review issue, wrapped in a cellophane bag...I know that one made the move with me!

I remember Bill Pierce and his darkroom articles from the early days, and David Vestal and Norman Rothschild...the 1970's era of Pop Photo was the Golden Era, as far as I am concerned. Herb Keppler came over from MODERN photography, when Pop absorbed Modern. Ahhhh, the good old days! I recall the name change of the early 2000's, from Pupular Photography to Popular Photography & Imaging; the latter name did not stick for long, as the diehard film crowd finally gave way to digitial, and the "Imaging"disclaimer was dropped, and the old name restored.

 

[Derrel]

One thing is clear: the older issues of Pop Photo were thicker, and had vastly more editorial content than the newer issues of the 2000's. Everything got thinner. Pop closed its online forum a few years back. The editorial content got flimsier, the advertising in the back gave way to internet on-line ads, so ad revenues must have declined. But make no mistake: I learned a huge amount of photo knowledge from this magazine in the 1970's and 1980's. The articles USED TO be written by leading educators in the field, and the porfolio section and the Q&A secrtioins, everything, used to be the height of popular photo technique and practice. Loads of tips and tricks and tidbits used to be in every issue, but it seems as if by 2010, the magazine was grasping at straws. Newer, niche magazines like Outdoor Photographer, had become the new equiment rewview and technique leaders.

 

[webestang64]

I used to get this rag back in the 80's, helped through my beginnings of photography......RIP to a great magazine.

Thank God my Old Car Weekly is still being printed.