Re: David Levy moving to Astronomy

With a new Editor-in-Chief at S&T, perhaps a new team is being
assembled.

I had a long chat with S&T's new editor, Bob Naeye, at the Pacific Astronomy
and Telescope Show in September. I told him that this past summer was the
first time in almost 50 years that I considered not renewing my
subscription. I felt that S&T had become too much like Astronomy. Whatever
the merits of Astronomy or lack thereof, there's no point in my getting two
versions of the same magazine. Bob told me to expect some forthcoming
changes to S&T. There'll be more on astrophotography in the magazine
(techniques & equipment, not pictures), and more of the main articles will
be written by scientists rather than editors. However, he denied that the
magazine has been "dumbed down" in recent years. His editorial in the Feb
'09 issue conforms to this view.

The decline of advertising revenue is a serious issue. Meade in their
heyday bought, I think, 10 pages or something like that. At one time, there
was essentially a complete Meade catalog in the magazine. Not now. So
there are fewer pages in the magazine than a couple of years ago, though
still many more than the typical issue of the 1960s. I was told, however,
that circulation has actually increased a bit.

I also complained about the books & pubs offered by S&T. Sky Publishing
(their old name) was a one-stop source for a large variety of star atlases
and observing guides. Most of that is gone. Bob said New Track Media
considered themselves to have bought a magazine, not a book publisher. The
staff at S&T is far smaller than it used to be. However, they may restart
the book side of the business.

Earlier in the show, before I had the chance to talk to Naeye, I was
chatting with another S&T staffer, and an astronomy author everybody here
would recognize came up and said that he didn't like either magazine and
doesn't subscribe to them, even though he writes articles for both. I
wasn't sure what his complaint was. I was complaining that things had been,
well, "dumbed down," but he was standing beside me and complaining that some
articles were too technical, with too many unexplained acronyms.

BTW, Naeye is pronounced "noy-uh" (starts like "noise"), not "nye" or some
variant of that. He says the name is Flemish.

I know nothing about the status of David Levy with S&T -- whether he's
moving totally to Astronomy or doing both mags. I see him annually at the
Starry Nights Festival in Yucca Valley, and he said nothing about it this
last time. But I suppose he would not have been at liberty to say anything
at the time.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California
33°27'59"N, 117°05'53"W


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