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Re: another garden magazine ceases

>You can almost watch the rotation of subject matter from
one magazine to the next... same plants over and over. Suggest something you
have not seen anyone tackle and the answer is thank you but no thank you.<

One of the rules of freelancing, Gene, is that you have to deal with the world as it is, not as how you'd like it to be. And one of those realities is that virtually every editor, at one time or another, says, "send me an idea for something different, not the same tired old stuff." But in the end, he/she goes with "mix as usual." The reality is that most of them do _not_ want anything radically new or different.

This is by no means confined to garden magazines. It permeates the whole consumer magazine industry. As a result, we often find that consumers (i.e., the people who read the magazine) and writers are far in front of the magazine's content. How many times have you said to yourself, for instance, "if that so & so would get out from behind his desk and see what's happening in the real world......?"

If we get too far in front, then we stop reading that magazine, and it goes into decline.

>   I have been told that a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. Believe
it firmly.<


I've always heard a variation of that: The only difference between a rut and a grave is dimensions.


   > Small individual family owned nurseries can
not compete with the big boxes. You must find your own identity and niche,
then fill it. <


This is true. But there's a deeper marketing question when specialty shops have to compete with the big boxes. Ask a local nursery owner what he does for a living. If he answers, "sell plants," then he's in the wrong business. His livelihood should be based on selling service. There is no other way he can compete with the discount chains and garden centers. I can buy a plant at Walmart, sure. But what I can't buy there are answers to my questions about how to care for that plant. After all, the clerk selling it to me was probably selling ladies unmentionables the week before.


Brook 
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