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Will Hemmings Motor New lose its relevance???


32tatra

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I just got and have been reading the new issue of Hemmings.  And found 5 cars for sale in it, that had already appeared in the "not my car"  sale forum, on the AACA website.  4 had already been sold and the fifth one was listed  at 5 thousand more.  Four of the ads came from Facebook Market place and the fifth from Hemming website. Having a magazine where it could take over a month for a ad to appear, does not sound like a good business model for the future.  Also Hemming has been getting thinner and thinner with each issue.  

Also Hemmings Classic Car magazine has lost 24 pages sine last June, it went from around 96 pages to 72 pages.  Is this because of, what going on?  Or are they just cutting costs?

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That ship sailed a couple of decades ago. There's a reason why HMN has editorial content in the magazine now. Hemming's biggest mistake was not getting in bed with Ebay motors from the very beginning. I dropped my HMN subscription at least 25 years ago. Even then, anything I wanted in an ad was already sold by the time I got the magazine and read it.

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It's sad. I too read the latest issue.....not much to get excited about.

 

I well remember the anticipation of the "big book" version coming in the mail every month. It was great reading material and all the classifieds were very full.

Had to have been over an inch thick. Its been many years since then.

 

Now.... well you know.....

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I always liked the Letters section of the old Hemmings (when the covers were kraft paper color).  Kind of an 'open forum' in printed form.  I earned myself a free ball cap with one of my replies sometime in the early 1990's.

 

Craig

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If a publication is not a "good read" with interesting content then its days are numbered. I know my opinion and views may be shaded by my own likes/needs but if it is something of the era I enjoy and have not seen or been aware of before and it is presented in a manner that not only leaves me satisfied I learned something "new" about "old" then that raises another question for me - what else is out there I haven't seen or don't know about. A couple of old photographs with a few sentences can be very rewarding - look at the Period Images thread................... This can happen in print publications as well and has for hundreds of years. You have to get the right combination, the right balance.

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I still subscribe. Back in October, I found a small print ad with no photo in Hemmings Motor News for a car that I never expected to be able to buy. It was about a 4 hour drive from my home. I called the guy and set up an appointment to see the car. A week later, I owned the car. If it were not for Hemmings Motor News I would have never had the chance to buy the car. I realize it is not as entertaining as it was years ago. I realize its business model is antiquated. Despite that, it still seems to be working fine for many people. I will continue subscribing for a while.   

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I am not looking to buy anything, but still subscribe just because. Something has happened along the way though because it has been since at least last december that I have gotten anything from them, the 'big book', classics or muscle.  I even thought to renew my subscriptions 😁 About once a week I think to myself I need to call and see whats going on but then I get distracted...........

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I stopped my subscription to HMN many years ago because I didn't have space to store those big magazines and I didn't want to just throw them out. I think their online magazine will keep them alive...I get the sense that higher quality cars are found in Hemmings, but I could be wrong. It's a great place to visit, though their are a few shortcomings. Besides not knowing whether their advertised cars have already sold or not, they have no system for telling you how much the car sold for, which can be useful information to many readers.

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Like newspapers the want ads were the cash cow. Cheap to put together, ran for a few issues on many cases, hundreds per page gave it a great page rate, it was the best tool available. Along comes the internet and that became an easier better tool. Cash is gone the product suffers. Newspapers are disappearing faster for the same reason. Advertising is on line. 
Books and some magazines are ok others are struggling. That’s progress. Hemmings didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel was a freight train called eBay and other online platforms. 

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Keep in mind, there has been a huge shake-up at Hemmings over the past year which includes some staff changes and explains Richard Lentinello's new publishing venture.

 

I still buy Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Muscle Machines each month, and HMN when I see an article in it I like.

 

Craig

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7 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

Print is dead, it just doesn't quite know it yet.

When I was growing up one of the monthly pieces of junk mail my dad got was a publication known as The SAE Journal which served as a members magazine with articles describing engineering achievements and an advertising platform for major automotive suppliers and engineering service companies.  My dad was an engineering manager at Ford.  After I grew up and was out on my own I happened to stop in to visit my dad on a day he was cleaning up a mess in the basement after the 25yr old gas water heater sprang a leak.  We valved off the old water heater and disconnected it.  The next day he had been to Sears and picked up a new gas water heater.  We got it down the stairs into the basement and quickly discovered it was about 4 inches shorter than the old one.  Before I left that day we agreed he needed some new pipe nipples to hook the new tank up to the old galvanized steel house plumbing.  I didn't go back to see my dad for several days and when I did the new water heater was up and running.  I commented he must have gotten to the hardware store to get the longer pieces of pipe and to my surprise he answered that he found another way to compensate for the shorter water heater.  Knowing what a clever engineer he was I expected to see the new water heater hanging 4 inches off the ground but to my surprise he just stacked up about 3 years worth of SAE Journals and set the water heater on top!  Brilliant!

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5 minutes ago, Str8-8-Dave said:

The next day he had been to Sears and picked up a new gas water heater.  We got it down the stairs into the basement and quickly discovered it was about 4 inches shorter than the old one.  Before I left that day we agreed he needed some new pipe nipples to hook the new tank up to the old galvanized steel house plumbing.  I didn't go back to see my dad for several days and when I did the new water heater was up and running.  I commented he must have gotten to the hardware store to get the longer pieces of pipe and to my surprise he answered that he found another way to compensate for the shorter water heater.  Knowing what a clever engineer he was I expected to see the new water heater hanging 4 inches off the ground but to my surprise he just stacked up about 3 years worth of SAE Journals and set the water heater on top!  Brilliant!

Being a gas appliance, I disagree about using flammable paper products immediately below it to compensate for height.   Some may argue there's 40 gallons of water just above to put out the fire, but open flames from burning paper can spread faster and cause extensive smoke damage in the process than time it takes for the water heater to rupture supposedly extinguish it.  NOT a brilliant move if you ask me, and your dad's homeowner's insurance might consider that as a form of 'negligence' should a fire occur from that source.

 

Craig  

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1 minute ago, 8E45E said:

Being a gas appliance, I disagree about using flammable paper products immediately below it to compensate for height.   Some may argue there's 40 gallons of water just above to put out the fire, but open flames from burning paper can spread faster and cause extensive smoke damage in the process than time it takes for the water heater to rupture supposedly extinguish it.  NOT a brilliant move if you ask me, and your dad's homeowner's insurance might consider that as a form of 'negligence' should a fire occur from that source.

I absolutely agree my dad's use of magazines to build a platform was some craziness but you missed the point.  The point was printed magazines have seen their day and are approaching useless if not obsolete.  As far as telling my dad's insurance company about this you are a little late.  He died in 1981...

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Am seeing this now since have reached the "tipping point" enough homes now have sufficient bandwidth (video does not need that much, 1 Mbps is enough to make it useful. Can even connect a Roku or a Firestick to most hotel TVs.

 

All of the people now telecommuting are discovering other things and satellite/cable TV is not it. Satellite particularly where it rains 55 inches a year. OTOH nearly everything I watch is streamed now. All of the Discovery car shows are $4.99/month for all and several first run movies (WW84, Godzilla vs Kong) could be seen on opening day. Expect soon with be back to two forms of TV - the original OTA (over the air - 65 channels at my house, some in English), and streaming over the internet.

 

So agree with Matt, except for specialty magazines and books (service manuals), print is dead and cable/satellite TV is next. Movie houses are questionable particularly when a 75" TV is $228 (no tuner). The world will never be like it was.

 

ps yes I know several techniphobes. They have Apples.

 

 

 

 

speed.jpg

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I like Hemmings Motor News.  I can keep a few issues, maybe six months worth, for reference, whereas, if I subscribed to an electronic "publication", it would be difficult to find a particular article amidst all of the other electronic "noise".  I have neither the time nor the interest to scroll through meaningless information overload.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Cheers,

Grog

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42 minutes ago, capngrog said:

I like Hemmings Motor News.  I can keep a few issues, maybe six months worth, for reference, whereas, if I subscribed to an electronic "publication", it would be difficult to find a particular article amidst all of the other electronic "noise".  I have neither the time nor the interest to scroll through meaningless information overload.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Cheers,

Grog

 

There is something about turning pages, I still have to get a physical newspaper everyday

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I tried a digital subscription  to Hemmings in the last year.    It was really cheap, but proved too hard to read.   I didn't read it much as a result.   So I decided to go back to a paper subscription for the coming year. 

Edited by 1935Packard (see edit history)
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5 hours ago, John348 said:

 

There is something about turning pages, I still have to get a physical newspaper everyday

 

I thought my 95 year old dad was the only guy still getting a newspaper.   They missed a delivery last week and all hell broke loose.

 

It is actually demoralizing how thin it is.

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10 hours ago, Str8-8-Dave said:

Knowing what a clever engineer he was I expected to see the new water heater hanging 4 inches off the ground but to my surprise he just stacked up about 3 years worth of SAE Journals and set the water heater on top!  Brilliant!

 

That appears to be Microsoft software engineering. Leave the existing, add lines of text, and beef up the processor.

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I am pretty sure I have said it here before, but if they are going light on ads, maybe they can make the print a bit larger so I can read it, they would need more pages thus a thicker magazine like we used to get. Win Win !!

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Took HMN since age 14 or 15, at 57 my renewal has been sitting since January.  The Model A section only has parts ads from usual known suppliers and so on.. Sure the occasional great car shows up, but in general I thumb through it in 15 minutes and cannot give old issues away.  I think for me anyway, internet is only one factor.  The  sale of HMN and editorial changes to a magazine within a magazine approach was kind of meh to me. The staff are really focused heavily on cars that interest them, great if it works for you, otherwise a lot of space, postage and so on. 

Not sure if I will keep it or not.  Also, some nod to 25, 30 or 40 years as a subscriber would be nice, but they didn't need to do that in the past.  

Edited by Steve_Mack_CT (see edit history)
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4 minutes ago, Steve_Mack_CT said:

Took HMN since age 14 or 15, at 57 my renewal has been sitting since January. 

Did one of your schoolteachers ever confiscate your copy of HMN like one of mine did?  I had my copy taken away from me until the end of the class in 11th grade!

 

Craig

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We used to run print ads in Hemmings to get those self-proclaimed "old school" guys who don't use E-mail or the internet. The reality of what would happen with those ads is that we would get a call 15 months after the ad and 12 months after the car sold asking if it was still available. When we told him it was sold, the guy on the other end would get angry like we'd tricked him or something. And in those cases where someone called while the magazine was still fresh and the car was available, they were often incredibly difficult to deal with--everything had to be mailed back and forth two or three times, they wanted printed photos mailed to them, they wanted us to send them SASEs, the postal service lost checks, etc. For the tiny number of customers that those ads generated, they also generated a ton of busywork and headaches for what were almost entirely fruitless leads. We made the conscious decision to walk away from the printed segment of the market, which was far more work than it was worth.

 

Sorry if that's any of you, but since you're here reading this, it's probably not. But a guy who tells me he doesn't use the internet and thinks it's a fad is like someone in the 1960s saying automobiles are a fad and the horse will come back and he's not buying a car because he prefers to be old school. Pffft.

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My local library had an ap that included Hemmings, among a bunch of other magazines. I liked reading it, but didn’t get enough value that I’ll pay for the subscription now that the ap is discontinued. I find the majority of cars in Hemmings to be overpriced. 

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2 hours ago, George Cole said:

A little over a year ago I purchased my 1920 Cole touring car through a HMN listing.  The seller didn't advertise it anywhere else.  Thank you HMN.  I'll keep renewing my technophobia paper subscription.

 

My Hemmings magazine came yesterday, and I have

been browsing through it.  I find there are advantages

to each medium:

 

---In flipping the pages of a printed magazine, it's easy to

come across something you weren't specifically looking for.

On the internet, I'd have to specifically select "Cole" to see that ad.

 

---With a printed magazine, I can easily respond to an ad

that was printed months ago, even a year ago.  The chances are

good that it's still available, as a Stutz was when I was looking for

a pre-war car.

 

However, I do like the internet version's many pictures.

Hemmings needs to promote the magazine more extensively.

Some cars for sale don't even get to the print version these days.

I want to see both succeed.

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I think it is losing its relevance... but...

 

I did find my car on Hemmings web page in 2015. Print ad, no pictures, just a simple description. I emailed the seller, got some pictures, and we struck a deal after I drove to the car and looked it over.

I wouldn't be surprised if the magazine goes away, but the classifieds are useful, and a great way to search quickly.

Edited by Ken_P (see edit history)
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1 hour ago, 8E45E said:

Did one of your schoolteachers ever confiscate your copy of HMN like one of mine did?  I had my copy taken away from me until the end of the class in 11th grade!

 

Craig

Ha, no but it did remind me about our zero tolorance for interacting with other students in study hall in 9th or 10th grade. I am passing notes with attractive young lady next seat over.  We get caught.  Guess whose homework got torn up and who was treated like they were not part of the crime!! 🤔🙄😠

 

Two pals and I did oral reports on an assignment to "write about something that interests you" in jr. Year.  Teacher got annoyed after hearing about a Chevelle, a dirtbike AND a Chevelle, and my Camaro. 

 

I reallize today the patience a HS teacher must need, we were basically "good kids" but they deal with a lot and worse - parents!

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Is an easy answer to small print in digital editions. It is called control "+" (control plus,  "-" minus shrinks). .pdfs have a "+"on the top. But the real answer is a 32 or 43" screen (under $200) & can easily add to a laptop. I use a 32 in the middle and 27s on each side plus a 4 position KVM (keyboard, video, monitor). Flat screens do not have the radiation issue that CRTs (cathode ray tubes) did.

 

ps HMN never had much appeal to me since generally buy only cars with Florida titles (and lack of rust).

 

pps weather is on now, apparently there is a dew point rating called "instant sweat". Must be a Florida thing.

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10 minutes ago, padgett said:

ps HMN never had much appeal to me since generally buy only cars with Florida titles (and lack of rust).

 

Salt spray and 110% humidity? Nah.

 

https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a32109247/forget-florida-the-pacific-northwest-has-the-best-climate-for-classic-cars/?source=nl

Edited by joe_padavano (see edit history)
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Tend to agree, spent a lot of time in Bellevue and cars there are nice just since retired are now far far away. They get much less sunshine (interior damage) than we do.

 

ps salt spay is within 5 miles of the coast where I grew up.. Deliberately now live in the middle of the state.

Edited by padgett (see edit history)
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20 minutes ago, Xander Wildeisen said:

I have sold cars through Hemmings. I would list a car with them and others, when bringing a car to market. One of many places to advertise something for sale.

 

I have as well, a lot of vehicles move through Hemmings, but I feel that it has become useless for parts searching.

 

2 hours ago, alsancle said:

 

I thought my 95 year old dad was the only guy still getting a newspaper.   They missed a delivery last week and all hell broke loose.

 

It is actually demoralizing how thin it is.

 

I just think it has become habit. I commuted by train and subway to NYC for 40 years, so every day at the platform I would buy a paper to read. In NYC there were 3 daily edition of the Daily News, Morning Edition, Evening Edition (stocks and Horse Racing results) and the Night Owl with sports scores and Trotter results, now the Daily News is a thin paper as well, and the NY Post has become akin to the National Enquirer. 

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Matt hit the nail on the head when he said

 

“For the tiny number of customers that those ads generated, they also generated a ton of busywork and headaches for what were almost entirely fruitless leads. We made the conscious decision to walk away from the printed segment of the market, which was far more work than it was worth.”

 

With mail delivery so messed up a lot of the ads are already obsolete. I’m a print guy, my business was magazine circulation, and I feel this type of pub has been dead for quite awhile. Magazines with information can be a great resource. Especially when used like Walt uses them. Magazines like newspaper want ads have been made obsolete by the speed and ease of the internet search. 
dave s 

Edited by SC38DLS (see edit history)
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Like SC38DLS above, I'm also in the magazine business as technical editor of a collector oriented print magazine. Quite frankly, the internet doesn't really compare. The articles we run are all worthy of keeping and many of our subscribers keep all their magazines - some going back to the very first about 35 years ago. It's regarded as a valuable research resource and we regularly get orders for back issues. In fact, we have to digitally reprint the earliest copies because there are no back issues left. We also take ads - this next issue will have the record number of color ads, nearly all from auction houses advertising sales coming up or from high-end dealers who place adds not to sell things but to remind collectors they are out there and willing to buy...

 

That said, I dropped Hemmings a long time ago. My interest is mostly brass car engineering and ends about 1930. The last copies of Hemmings I received were about 99% adds for 50s and 60s parts etc. There were, maybe, 2 or 3 ads offering something I could possibly be interested in and they were wildly overpriced. Print isn't dead but its function has evolved. I'm sure that is why Hemmings added editorial content. Unfortunately, in my case, it's aimed at a general audience and that isn't me.

Edited by JV Puleo (see edit history)
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3 minutes ago, JV Puleo said:

Like SC38DLS above, I'm also in the print magazine business as technical editor of a collector oriented print magazine. Quite frankly, the internet doesn't really compare. The articles we run are all worthy of keeping and many of our subscribers keep all their magazines - some going back to the very first about 35 years ago.

Which magazine? 

 

I do keep ALL my 'old' magazines, as I showed here------>  Your Bookshelf - General Discussion - Antique Automobile Club of America - Discussion Forums (aaca.org)

 

Craig

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