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Dear Mr. Menduno -
Thank you very much for passing the note along to Richard Pyle--the one where
you ask for suggestions for remaking AquaCorps into a magazine that people
would once again praise. Coincidentally, for the last three months I have
been thinking about blasting the "new" AquaCorps in rec.scuba and in the
techDiver letter, but I've been working 16-20 hour days this semester, and
didn't quite feel up to the task. Anyway, it appears that others have been
there before me.
For the sake of time, then, I won't meticulous about my complaints--I'll
simply give you some impressions, and let you (and other readers of techDiver)
decide whether my feelings are just, or even fair. By the way, I do realize
that I'm not the one who's trying to meet a payroll, and that it is unfair,
in an important sense, for me to criticize you if you feel that you need to
do certain things to survive. But, you *did* ask....
-. Tone down the fancy typography, and cut down on the pictures.
I have a friend who's done technical writing for a New York company
for years. Recently, he returned from a period of convalescence to
his work, which he had done single-handedly for years, and discovered
that his layouts had been restructured. To quote my friend,
"My first impression: the thing was invented by some printing mavens
who thought that because they can use all the possible tricks that
modern typesetting makes possible, they must....
"Just pick up any magazine from a news stand, even Consumer Reports.
The thing will be a riot of different styles, typefaces, and colors
suitable for a three-ring circuis, a Toys R Us store, the kind of
picture book one buys for one's outstanding baby ....
"All of this is happening at a time when people don't read any more;
they're too busy absorbing sound bytes from MTV, and books are hard.
Is printing taking its stylistic cues from (ugh) MTV nowadays?
Does the printed word have to be dressed up like a circus clown?"
Maybe I'm an old fogey, but your mag now looks like it fits this
description: constantly varying column widths, curved column borders,
footers strung out over multiple pages, and pictures for the sake of
pictures rather than for information. In my humble opinion, the
thing that a magazine can do best is to deliver quality information
in a timely, easily absorbed fashion. I think that the fancy
typographical effects work against the strength of a magazine whose
primary intent (in the eyes of many) is to inform.
The same goes for the simple printing of pictures for the sake of printing
pictures. How much informational content, for examples, was there in
your "Illustrated Wrecker"? In your computer-altered photo of the
Lusitania? In those photos of the military diver peeking his head out of
the water that recurred throughout the last two magazines? (If I see one
more such diver, I'll scream, I just know I'll scream...) In how many
other photos?
A recent poster to the tech diver newsletter referred to AquaCorps as a
"rag". I must admit that I was starting to feel much the same way!
When I started looking at the articles more closely, I also realized that
my judgment about the quality of the articles was being clouded by the
aggravation that I was experiencing when I was trying to read text
against a complicated background (see, for example, N9, p. 82) or in
a non-standard layout.
Couldn't you have eliminated a few of the pictures in your "Wreckers"
issue, and devoted a little more copy to wreck diving proper?
I was originally going to compare the percentage of column-inches in
AquaCorps 1, 2, and 3 that were devoted to information to the percentage
of column-inches in the last two AquaCorps, but I'll let someone else
do that. What do you think they'd discover?
-. Strike the machismo.
And I don't just mean the now-infamous robot-pinching-nipple or B&D
sequences--which managed to offend so many of your readers. It's more
that the mag seems like it's starting to be geared to late adolescent
males who'd like to take up Hard Core Diving (TM). Consider, for example,
-. The military stories ("Precise questions from the students, no
one's playing smart ass");
-. The association of a grim-and-gritty attitude with diving
(Recall the opening line of Bent: "Shit happens...").
-. The grim-and-gritty photos and drawings of males, including the ones
in the ads (N8, cover; N8, p.6; N8, p. 39; N9, p.50 -- they're all
over the place-- why isn't anyone smiling, or looking like they're
enjoying themselves?-- reminds me of the Marlboro man);
-. The portrayal of the ocean as an anima figure (N8, p.7; N8 and N9,
centerfolds; front cover, N9; even those dumb little cartoons, with
male divers chasing mermaids);
-. The emphasis on interviews with males. how many females have you
interviewed, other than Polly Tapson? What about Evelyn Dudas?
Mary Ellen Eckhoff? Sylvia Earle?
In N9, you quote Phil Nuytten as saying "Tekkies 'are not 15 year old kids
with their girlfriends [sic] initials shaved into their heads'" ---
but then why does your magazine seem to read in this way?
-. Remember the "average" (i.e., non-wealthy) divers.
Many of the articles in the last three magazines seem to have been
pitched at readers who were contemplating the purchase of Newt Suits,
computers, or dive planning software. For some reason, I didn't get
quite the same feeling from the initial issues of AquaCorps, which
seemed to focus more on "basic" concerns like risk management,
motivation, gas, techniques for open-circuit diving, and DCI.
Learning about the Technology of tomorrow is interesting, but did you
really have to devote that much space in *two* *consecutive* issues to
ADSes? How many of your readers do you think will use or buy a Newt
Suit, anyway? Or even a rebreather--in the near future?
Have you considered reviewing less exotic equipment? Training programs?
Do you even feel at liberty to do such reviews, given the monies that
you obtain from advertising (the old _Skin Diver_ problem)?
-. Be careful about your reporting on software technology.
Articles like the one on David Story's software for visualizing
decompression, and the Visual S software, seem liked like puff pieces
to me--little there to sink my teeth into. I mean, yes, you can
graph multiple ribbons depicting a diver's tissue loading, but the
interesting question, to my mind, is how do you make such information
available to a diver in the middle of a dive? Also, how do you allow
a diver, in the middle of a dive, to ask "what if" questions about
tissue loading in real-time?
I also think that VR and the Internet are being overhyped, and your
magazine seems as starry-eyed as the others I see. Sure, both
represent potential revolutions, but the era of cheap, readily available
VR is still probably years away. This, anyway, was the conclusion that an
ESU master's student came to after looking at the problems that confront
the developers of Virtual Worlds--a prime one being the need to
painstakingly hand-craft every new virtual environment. And as for the
national data highway, methinks it more like a national information bog,
or a system not unlike the US railroad system ca. 1835, or--perhaps more
kindly--a national CB radio.
I was also irritated by the HotWired article, which mentioned the Canter
and Siegel episode without really documenting it (leaving those in your
reading audience who don't use Usenet out in the cold), and which talked
about Mosaic as the "second wave" of the Internet revolution (really??
how long have these people been on-line? do they remember the era,
for example, before Usenet news?)
-. You're missing some interesting leads.
I was disappointed, for example, when AquaCorps simply reran its earlier
interview with Mr. Exley after Sheck's death, instead of doing something
more comprehensive. Also--speaking of fear in reporting incidents--a
few of your incident reports, judging from what I've seen reported on
the net, or heard from more experienced divers, seem rather incomplete
(e.g., the second incident in N9). Saying more about the details of
the episodes in question might have shed more light on why the problems
happened--and how others might have avoided them.
The TechDiver newsletter has had other interesting discussions that
could be followed up on: "is oxygen cleaning really necessary? does
heliox create a higher incidence of DCI? how effective is a p-valve
vs. diapers?" (one of those incongruous but *important* questions).
These concerns seem more immediate to me than, say, a CIS Lunar that
most of us simply can't justify buying at this time.
Have I talked enough? It's much later than I want it to be, so I'll simply
put this in the mail and turn in. Thanks for listening. I'd really like
to see you return to the spirit of the earliest AquaCorps, which seemed
to be one of
"giving [your] customers correct, complete, and helpful information"
which is my technical-writing-friend's definition of quality. If the
information is good enough, the product should stand on its own.
Respectfully,
-- Phil Pfeiffer
========
Phil Pfeiffer, Computer Sci. Dept. | Kindness in thought leads to wisdom.
East Stroudsburg University, | Kindness in speech leads to eloquence.
East Stroudsburg, Pa. 18301-2999 | Kindness in action leads to love.
phil@es*.ed* (717) 424-3820 | -- Lao-Tsu
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