Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Bring Back The "Gear Heads!"

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 04:21:14 -0500

Nuts and bolts lament

Mobile Radio Technology, Jan 1, 2003

Great Falls, MT

MRT magazine: My steady guidepost for the past two decades. Always full of “good”
technical stuff and plenty of participation
by authors who knew the “nuts and bolts” of communications.

But … what's this? MRT has gotten thinner! The articles are changing, too! No longer are
there meaty technical subjects to help while away those spare moments between engineering
projects! The “gearhead” authors have disappeared, taking the path of communication
“dinosaurs” in a management-style “ice-age” streamlining of a publication. This kind of
reminds me of the
evolution of another similar publication I once knew and loved back in the 1970s… What was
its name?… Oh, yes…
Communic… Oh! I had better not say it here!

Suffice it to say, MRT quickly saved the day when it appeared, picking up where that other
magazine left off when it decided to
target communications-related business topics instead of “techie” stuff. It seemed to have
fallen prey to the newfound era of the
“suits.”

Throughout my [more than] 30-year career, I have managed to weave a rather intricate path
through many electronic engineering disciplines. Having started at the “ripe” old age of
15 in broadcast television and AM radio, I finally started earning my additional stripes
in land mobile radio work when I was 18.

Over the course of the following years, I diverged from direct communications work but
indirectly pursued other work in the
form of RF design and related issues. Now, while preparing for retirement in the upcoming
years, I decided to “relax” a bit and
dive back into communications, er… “wireless,” this time in a official engineering
capacity.

I love to read. And there is nothing better than when one finds a publication that caters
to the more technical subjects. But those
publications are becoming hard to find. It seems that many of them are headed up by people
who find it easier to generalize on
not-too-technical subjects that are easy to crank out for their not-too-technical
audiences.

But we must remember that, for every manager out there in the world, there are numerous
support people keeping that manager's
job viable. And those people need a publication targeted at them just as much as that
manager does. Possibly even more!

Yes, I have been a manager in past times. But I understood every intricacy of the work my
people performed.

Thus, I loved to read MRT, much to the chagrin of my peers. But MRT now seems to have lost
its technical luster. And I doubt if
it is going to return.

Now … I wonder if there is another new old-style MRT publication out there where all of
the technical authors have gone
to?

Gregory Muir Communications specialist
Falls Communications Inc.

McCarthy replies:

I'm guessing that with 30-plus years in the technical engineering field, you have seen
many changes. You have probably
seen many markets — whole industries, in fact — as well as magazines fall by the wayside.

You mention that the magazine is getting thinner. This is in no small way why MRT must
change. The number of pages
we print depends on the amount of advertising support the magazine has. No one can put out
a magazine unless he has
the money to pay the printer and post office at a minimum. Even Henry Luce wore a suit, so
I'm not sure that the era of
the “suits” is new found.

The poor economy has played a huge role in the slimming down of almost every tech magazine
out there. Many have not
survived.

At the same time, the industries that MRT covers are in a state of flux. The letters that
follow yours about the decline of
family radio businesses and disappearance of small dealers of all kinds show how
fundamentally the economic landscape
has changed. Perhaps for the worse. But that is the terrain on which we are currently
deployed.

The technology is also changing, as are the roles of the regulators, for better or worse.
The politics are changing too,
especially as the country fights the “War on Terrorism” and enhances homeland security and
public safety.

We are in a strange position at MRT. We want this magazine, the mrtmag.com Web site and
IWCE tradeshow to be more
responsive to your specific needs and the overall general needs of the communities we
serve than ever before.

Let's face it, this is a matter of survival for us, but we are one of the few
organizations hanging in there with the
resources to make this work in print, in person and on the Internet.

We would like nothing more than to have readers who sing our praises. In fact, we would
all love customers who sing
nothing but: Happy, happy, joy, joy. But about the only magazine that might have that sort
of audience is High Times.

When you say the “nuts and bolts” of communications, my assumption is that you are talking
about gear. We are wide
open to the gearhead authors. We are actively seeking them, and we've asked some who left
MRT to come back. We
welcome suggestions from readers as to whom we should seek out.

We do not want to abandon any of our readers; we want to serve them better.

But we also realize that we have a dynamic market with a changing audience, and
technologies and products that need
to be sorted and understood.

And we have to figure out how to pay for printing and postage, too.

http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_nuts_bolts_lament/index.htm

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