Sky & Telescope December 1998 [antikvár]

SpectrumA Death in the FamilyI once asked a visiting Soviet astronomer about tlie fortunes of a Dr. X, his countryman who I'd met in Prague years before. I described him as wonderfully bright and ambitious, and wondered why he'd dropped out of sight. The deadpan answer was, "Perhaps he was too ambitious."Maybe that's what went wrong with Earth, a magazine aimed at educating us about how our planet works. When it first appeared, the noise on the street said its objective was to be a competitor to National Geographic. Indeed, Earth started out looking like a contender, for it was elegantly designed, sported a larger format than NG, and was printed on premium paper. But its articles, even at the beginning, seemed irrelevant; they didn't inspire me mentally or spark me to somehow get involved with our Earth.Earth pushed up daisies in August after a run of 614 years, which is typically the slack cut for a new publication to meet profit targets. You could see the end coming in 1996, when it devolved into a very ordinary-looking magazine. Bean-counters had clearly been at work.All of us who love science, and want to see its message promulgated widely, should mourn this loss. We easily forget that only a decade or so ago omnibus science magazines sprang up like mushrooms after a summer rain and seemed to flourish. Then, within only a few years, they dropped dead. Upstarts like Science '8x were swept away along with grizzled veterans like Science Digest, which tried to ride a wave of hot design/hot topics and got drowned in a comber.In my opinion. Earth should have carved out a niche, albeit one very different from NG. But for a magazine to succeed it must have relevance to readers. That's the ultimate benchmark, and that's where Earth dropped the ball.What prompted this Spectrum was a chat I had with our proofiread-er. Sue Bryant, the afternoon before I learned Earth was being folded. We spent some after-hours moments shop-talking about how much we depend on each other and how important that synergy is to create the best product possible.It's easy to invent a magazine like Playboy; its focus and its target market don't take much imagination! But to serve a discriminating audience like the world commimity of amateur and professional astronomers you have to empathize with its soul. That's the way it's always been around here, and that's why Sky & Telescope will continue to flourish.PS. And there's more bad news. In August Carl Helmers Jn announced that the four-year-old quarterly SETIQuest would cease publication. At least for the unmediate future its Web site, http://www.SETlQuest.com/, will continue for those interested in bioastronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.