[svlug] (forw) Linux Journal, April 1994 - November 2017

[Michael Eager]

On 12/01/2017 06:22 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-ceases-publication
> 
>    Linux Journal Ceases Publication
>    Dec 01, 2017 By Carlie Fairchild
> 
>    EOF
> 
>    It looks like we’re at the end, folks. 

I'm sad that LJ has folded.  It is a bit of a surprise, but not entirely 
unexpected.

I gave away most of my LJ back issues some time ago, but I kept the copy 
of issue #1 (or maybe it was #2) in my souvenir box for sentimental 
reasons.  Right beside the old Dr. Dobbs: Running Light Without 
Overbyte, and the West Coast Computer Faire proceedings.  The old LJ 
issues were a treasure.  The recent issues, not so much.

There were changes in LJ even before they went to digital distribution 
only. They only got worse after the digital version came out.  Same 
number of pages, nominally, but each page was about 1/4 to 1/3 the size 
of the printed page, and the content seemed narrower, more repetitive, 
and progressively less interesting.

I've served on the LJ Editorial Advisory Board for several years.  We 
were asked our opinion of whether a proposed article was something that 
LJ should publish.  Sometimes people would comment about the approach an 
author might take,  I didn't follow whether our up or down votes made 
much of a difference; it seemed that LJ published most submissions.

I realize that the Linux community is pretty diverse, but it felt that 
LJ's audience didn't include me.  I do a bunch of admin stuff for my own 
systems (VMs, LXC, ZFS. networking), but LJ seemed to be focused on 
devops folks.  For example, the cover of the Nov. issue is about 
controlling a server farm and deploying cloud clusters.  Series of 
articles about Ansible or Puppet.  A lot of this has to do with the 
Associate Editor, a devops guy, and columnists with similar backgrounds. 
  (And they lost Marcel Gagne some time ago.)

I think I was the only developer on the Advisory Board.  When Carlie 
asked me to be on the Board, several years ago, I suggested that there 
be more articles about Embedded Linux, an area where I have a lot of 
experience and which (at least from my viewpoint) is very active.  That 
didn't get much traction.  I wrote a series of articles about getting 
started with Embedded Linux for Embedded.com, which I've been told is on 
their list of most read articles.  This could have been published on LJ. 
  I suggested other articles about software development which generated 
little interest.

There didn't seem to be much interest in articles which involved the 
Linux internals, as opposed to applications which ran on Linux.  Or 
Windows.  Some were Open Source, some closed.  Often LJ published 
articles which didn't seem to be appropriate for a journal about Linux, 
such as articles about Arduino development or 3D printing.  I thought 
they would be better in Maker.  There were many articles about Shawn's 
experiences managing networked Windows systems, installing a wireless 
bridge, Android apps, or non-Linux, non-Open Source Ubiquiti cameras.

Although I felt a bit guilty, since I was on Linux Journal's Editorial 
Advisory Board, I didn't read LJ very often.  When I did, I'd find there 
was little that I would be really interested in.  This didn't make the 
digital LJ one of my "go to" magazines, not like LJ was a number of 
years ago.  In comparison, when I read Linux Pro Magazine, I find that 
I'm turning down the corners of pages in almost every issue so that I 
can go back to them later.

I've watched other magazines become more and more narrowly focused until 
they disappear.  I think of Dr. Dobb's Journal, which used to be 
innovative, until it seemed to become obsessed with Agile development. 
I would open an issue, skim the Table of Contents and only find articles 
about how to run my Scrum better and toss the magazine on the "not now 
and maybe not later" pile.  (And, as long as I'm being critical of DDJ, 
who prints the ToC with blue ink on green background?  I'm not color 
blind, but it made it more difficult to find interesting articles, 
assuming there were any to be found.)

There were no hints of LJ's impending demise on the Advisory Board email 
list, other than fewer article proposals being forward to us.  Indeed, 
Carlie didn't copy the list with her announcement.  I know that it is a 
challenge to publish a magazine.  Perhaps if Carlie had asked the Board 
our opinion, she would have gotten feedback which might have suggested 
ways to invigorate the magazine.

-- 
Michael Eager    eager at eagerm.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306