When I was active in the SF&F Community (hmm best explain for some folks, Science Fiction and Fantasy) I was occasionally drawn in to panels at conventions about paper magazines........we having advanced beyond clay and wax tablets and the internet only thought of in Heinlien novels.
As with the "want to be a paper back writer" crowd the youth and not so youthy gathered were always sure they could make a pile of loot producing a new better than anyone else SF&F pulp-a-zine. I generally sat in back and only giggled and during the break up after the panel discussions would comment on the number of existing such magazines and how many were more than five years old.
Generally the panel folks were producers of what were called fan-zines. These were stappled together sheets of typing paper and each contributor had to contribute a certain number of copies and pay ment was a complete copy of that -zine with your story in it. Sometimes the "publisher" (the guy with the stapler) actually had some additional copies made up and sold them at SF&F convintions......not infrequently from a table in a hallway rather than a paid for booth in the dealer's room.
Everyone who had ever stapled copied or thought they might write for one of these fan-zines seemed convinced they would be the next big name in magazines and novels and that they would soon appear on lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Finally one year I could stand it no more.
After they had been going a bit I stood up and asked, "So what sort of arrangement is best to have with a distributor?" Most of the presenters just looked toward me and blinked like deer caught in the head lights. It had never occurred to them that magazines did not magically appear at the news stand, grocery, or book store. "How do you get the funds to pay your staff and writters between the time the current issue leaves the press ( and how do you pay typesetters and printers) and funds start to come in?"
How do you make money on advertising? What is a fair price for advertising in your magazine so folks will buy the space? What is a fair commission to folks selling that ad space? How do subscriptions work? How important ARE subscriptions?
Are there any governmental requirements for folks publishing? What is reasonable pay for those submitting stories and articles? Taxes?
About this time there were many in the crowd looking on me in horror. It seems I had completely killed the F that stood for Fantasy.
Oddly when I turned to sit down I saw the publisher of one of the successful for decades SF&F zines sitting quietly in the back as well and grinning at me and wagging his finger at me.
Folks, especially folks that have never even submitted an article to a pulp-zine really have no idea what is involved.
It seems to me that Harris and others have shot themselves in the foot by flooding too many titles and one shots onto the market for advertisers or buyers to keep up with. That MORE magazines have not gone under is the wonder.
I like things like THR. I can get a feel for various posters and feel I can trust their opinions better than some ad driven magazine editor. Some of the photos are as good as anything in print ( of course some are as poor as mine).
You tube is good though I worry about the "serious" you tube poster being swayed by adds to some extent, possibly, even with the lack of ad control they seem to have. Also some folks as elsewhere on the web equate number of posts with a degree of expertness on their part. here is some weird and even poorly researched stuff out there and some of it is being quoted by others.
Speaking of Wikipedia.........
Anyhow, TS Jr. and RAH. I tried the Hardy Boys, but must have found them to late......plus I got tired real fast of bad guys to stupid to take the boy's pocket knives. Admit it some where on the order of one third of the books had an over looked pocket knife getting them out of trouble. Of course there was the time I got locked in the Leon County Sheriff's Office holding cell with a pocket knife that had been over looked....... I did read a pile of HB to my son when he was nine or ten.
-kBob