Re: Modern Photography

["Charles E. Love, Jr." <cel14@cornell.edu>]

At 03:43 PM 11/28/96 -0500, you wrote:
>At 02:01 PM 11/28/96 -0400, Greg Mironchuk wrote:
>
>>One of the very few useful and intelligent things that was ever done in
>>Modern Photography Magazine was ...
>
>Hey, wait a minute!  I liked Modern and lament its sad passing a decade ago.
>Fine magazine, sorely missed.  And I'm letting my Pop subscription die a
>peaceful death -- I'm sick of misinformation.
>
>Marc
>
Hey, Marc!  Don't you know that the current Pop Photo is run by the same
people that used to run Modern, including Keppler?  What happened, as
Keppler tells the story, is that Modern and Pop were both declining in ad
pages in the '80's, and Modern terminated Keppler and changed regimes.  Pop
then hired Keppler, who brought over some of his old stalwarts from Modern.
Modern then declined even faster, and eventually Hachette (the French empire
that took over Pop) had an opportunity to buy Modern and shut it down.
Keppler denies he took any pleasure in this (hard to believe) but that's
what happened.  

However, you are right on the important thing, certainly--Pop/Modern has
been dramatically dumbed down.  I ran across a 1983 issue of Modern the
other day, and the lead test was of the Mamiya RZ.  They won't waste any
time on MF today--just stupid buyers' guides with endorsements of everything
by pros, but no comparisons.  Instead we spend lots of time on point n'
shoots.   I share with Mr. Puts some respect for their SQF testing method,
which they have developed since the demise of Modern, but they test cameras
less and less.  The problem for me is that there's no other magazine like
them--Shutterbug is, as we have said, loaded up with misinformation, and
Peterson's is just awful--one buyer's guide after another.
Charles E. Love, Jr.
CEL14@CORNELL.EDU