Re:thoughts on TAG woes

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Paul Krombholz wrote:

> I especially want to know what you and the others think of the idea of
> making TAG less expensive and time consuming to print.  I don't think there
> is necessarily any loss of value to the readers, and the next poor slob who
> is the editor won't have such a daunting task publishing it.  Also, he or
> she won't have to spend so much time chasing advertisers if we can do it
> cheaper.

Well, *MY* feeling is that we could get slightly better production values
with TAG printed the same way it is now (black & white litho with
occasional color inserts), by improving photo quality & size, and
improving the visual layout & flow of things.  But in general it's not our
production value or the cost of TAG that's our problem, it's tardiness and
lack of good articles. Getting authors to write is a daunting process
whether or not one prints in color or black & white, and whether there are
ads or not.

As to time consuming, I think doing it up in PageMaker & sending it to the
printers is the least time-consuming.  Remember that part of what takes
TAG so long right now is that Mary only edits the content.  Then she sends
the individual articles and photos to Cheryl who actually does all the
paste-up & sends it off to the printer.  As far as I know, Cheryl has
never been late with that part of the job.

I'm not particularly hot on printing it on an inkjet & having to collate
the booklets.  This is what the Apistogramma Study group does.  Frankly,
the results show.  It looks like something someone printed out on their
printer at home and stapled together.  In its current form, TAG at least
looks respectable.

That said, I still beleive that it's up to the production editor to
decide how their magazine looks (speaking as one myself now).

  - Erik

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