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From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: PCMagazine recriminations
Message-ID: <96546@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 1 May 91 20:38:13 GMT
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| From: root@zswamp.uucp (Geoffrey Welsh)
| 
|    Despite suggestions that PCMagazine and others cater to their
| advertisers, I've always felt that the lack of quality in their reviews
| is due more to a lack of familiarity with the subject at hand.

  Yes, it's tempting to believe the conspiracy theory, but as the saying
goes: ``Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained
by incompetence.'' (Or some such reading.)

|    This, however, it typical of the industry.  No one - not even
| big-budget rags like PCMag - can afford to be come very familiar with
| *all* of the products on the market.  Even if technology were not
| changing at a rapid pace, it would take a lifetime to learn enough to be
| prepared to deal with a year's feature reviews in PCMag.
| 
|    Let's try not to get too carried away by the accusations, and in stead
| recognize that published tests are usually done by relative neophytes in
| the field ...

  Uhmmm, if I *was* buying PC Magazine, or any other magazine that
specialized in any area, whether computers, horses or whatever, I would
expect to get value for my money.  I view shoddy workmanship in writing
just as I would in tangible products like toasters.  If it's bad, I'm
going to complain, return the product, cancel my subscription, tell all
my friends about the bad value, etc.  Why should PC magazines get any
kind of special treatment?

  I think it's basically like quality in newspapers.  Say the National
Enquirer vs. the New York Times.  Only we don't have a New York Times
quality level magazine available and I don't think that PC Magazine is as
bad as the National Enquirer.  It's just annoyingly mediocre and tries to
portray itself as more competent than it really is which hurts both users
and vendors when it gets things wrong.  It's especially irritating to see
a magazine which seems to be incapable of publishing a correction or
retraction.

  Someone said that a publication which catered to its advertizers by
only providing good reviews would rapidly lose credibility.  Excepting
the assumption that readers would be able to perform such a correlation,
I agree completely.  But I think that it also applies to competence ...

Casey