Hello everyone,
Earthlink has not been posting new messages from most newsgroups since December 8, so I'm between a rock and a hard place. I read the "new tea mag" posts through google, but I'm responding through my usenet client server, so I *hope* this comes through. Mike, would you e-mail to let me know.
I read most of the new mag, having received it awhile back. I have many criticisms, most too obvious to mention. Here are my major concerns:
Pictures are not properly captioned, even where the pictures are as important as or more important than the text.
In some articles, there is much gracious and flowery language of tea praise, but at this point a lack of substance. A person new to Pu'erh would learn much, an old Pu'erh hand far less.
The paucity of advertising is a mere function of the mag's newness; if economically successful, you will soon see the mag full of ads. I hope quality and quantity of text is not compromised.
I was miffed by the tone of the oolong 5 tea review article. My miffedness reflects my feeling about the mag in general. The article contained a great deal of unnecessary text. (I do *not* refer here to Guang's article. Get good copy editors, and let them have their way with the text. While some articles are well written, others are amateurish and adolescent. Some are overlength. I will
*not* be more specific.Overall impression: Nicely laid out, in some cases well written and informative. The future is probably bright. (BTW, kill the cute text over picture stuff; it's impossible to read.)
Here is my understanding of the genesis of the first issue: It has gone through an experimental introductory printing, a copy of which I've got. It will go through a second printing aimed at a broader Asian market, and then a third aimed at the Americas. Between each printing, editing and redaction will take place. So, I hope by the time the third printing comes out, the typos, inappropriate word choices, syntactic and factual mistakes that might have crept in are snipped out. I think objectivity and agressive editing will make all the difference. Let's just see.
Michael