by Greg Mayer
Cat Fancy, after nearly 50 years, is about to cease publication. The December 2014 issue, out now, seems to be the last, so you may want to get a copy. Cat Fancy has been for decades the “serious” magazine about cats– cat breeding, cat welfare, and, well, cat fancy. It is going the way of many print magazines (i.e. extinct), but Abraham Riesman of New York magazine also attributes its demise to changing tastes in what people like about cats: once it was grace and breeding, now it’s viral videos of funny things cats do; once people wanted to know how to pick the right flea collar, now it’s how to pick a cat person for dating. The I Can Has Cheezburger and lol cats approach has done in the more more staid point of view of the older magazine.
The publishing company that owns Cat Fancy is going to publish an alternative cat magazine called Catster, which is supposed to appeal to the more modern cat lover. The picture below has appeared widely on the internet as a cover of the new magazine, but it is such an obvious, over-the-top parody of Buzzfeed-style clickbait, that I cannot credit the claim that this is an actual magazine cover, and I assume it’s a mocking knockoff by someone who preferred the old Cat Fancy.
A quick look on the internets shows that there are a number of British cat magazines: Catworld, Your Cat, and The Cat. I cannot really say anything about the content of these, but at least there will be some English-language cat magazines still in existence come the new year.
h/t The Dish
Surprised they’re not merely transitioning to an online-only “presence.”
b&
Just more bad news. I wonder if our subscription for Cat Fancy that runs to August will carry to this new attempt….
Noooo!
15% of internet traffic is cats. Is a paper magazine still needed?
I have trouble seeing this as bad news. Surely it’s a good thing that the paperless future we’ve been promised for decades is finally arriving, and square miles of forest need no longer be clearcut in order to dump ten pounds of newsprint on everyone’s doorstep every week.
The paper companies (in the USA) regrow their forests. If they don’t use the forests for paper, what will become of the land? More “paved paradise”?
And what about those who don’t have internet? Well, perhaps most wouldn’t subscribe anyway, but in 2013, 21% of US households had no internet connection (Pew Research – http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/19/census-computer-ownership-internet-connection-varies-widely-across-u-s/)
It might read better to say “even if most wouldn’t subscribe anyway.” I don’t mean to sound dismissive of the 21%; actually I’m amazed such a large portion of a potential market can be ignored.
Paving over is not the only option. Perhaps the land could be allowed to return to a natural state that provides habitat for a variety of wildlife instead of being maintained as monoculture tree farms.
Sounds ideal to me.
FTFY
I’ve read that the criminalisation of Cannabis in the US was a plot by paper and news manufacturer Hearst to get hemp out of the way as competition for his woodpulp forestry interests. I wonder how that’s going now, in these days of (regionally) regenerating forests and legal pot: is hemp becoming a mainstream fibre again? Not yet, at least.
Yeah, much better to mine all that coal for server farms.
Processing trees into paper also consumes energy, and that energy cost is not subject to Moore’s Law.
21 Things Cats Do Not Want You To Know!
Yes there are a few of us left who actually read real books, without batteries or electronics. It may be a dying art but there are still a few of us left.
I have a shelf of old Rex Stout books that I can’t justify buying in a different format when paper is perfectly readable.
IMO, online magazines are vastly inferior to traditional mags. There’s no “thumbing through” for one thing…
Thanks Greg, for helping carry on in Jerry’s absence.