Hi,
I will answer in English, because I think this might be interesting for our subscribers abroad too.
patrick dirksen wrote:Wat ik wel heel erg vind is dat de militaire updates verdwenen zijn; ik wil juist een blad in mijn hand hebben in plaats van dat op te moeten zoeken op internet!
No, I'm not going to discuss this any further
, but a little background on this might be useful.
During last year’s survey, we also asked how many people actually read the different sections. It turned out that a very small minority only read these military updates on a regular basis. I don't have the figures at hand at the moment, but I think it was somewhere around 5%! (might have been 7 or 8, but not higher), which was the lowest percentage of all sections. But this was in sharp contrast to how the section was rated (by those who actually read it), apart from the Stoffer en Blik I think it got the highest assessment.
Personally I think this is because very few people actually use this section to update their own databases, with the majority just looking up the information on the internet -like our online databases- when they need it. But this is guesswork on my behalf.
When you're just looking at the outcome of the survey, this would mean the military updates would not have any legitimacy to be included at all.
But the editorial team found this a little bit over the edge, because for most editors it is half the fun just keeping our databases current (and publishing it of course) to start with - I think you just have to be a total nerd to enjoy this (and happy to be one!
).
But on the other hand the majority of our readers (indirectly) said we better could use the pages for other subjects, like this new photography section (sorry Spine, but this was the "second most wanted new section"!), but also for more emphasis on the "where to stand on airport X", which was the most wanted improvement.
So we had a heartbreaking dilemma....
We thought we had found the "polder model" solution to remove these updates from the printed magazine, and make them available in a
printable format through our website, for those people who wanted them anyhow.
As a side effect we thought this had the additional bonus we now have the change to put more (background) information in there as we are less restricted by the number of pages we are allowed to use, and they are digitally searchable, using an external (free) application like Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop Search and such.
Hope this clarifies at least a bit this particular move.
Regards,
Hans
