Kelsey Media buys Mortons titles

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I’m surprised this doesn’t appear to have been mentioned already.

Morton’s titles and events (but not printing) have been bought by Kelsey Media who publish Ships Monthly among other magazines.

How this might affect  Model Engineer, Model Flying and Model Boats we will have to wait and see.

The Engineer and Boating forums are currently integrated into the Mortons website so there are some big questions there!

https://www.printweek.com/content/news/mortons-sells-media-wing-printing-operations-retained/

Colin

[Ches Green UKParticipant @chesgreenuk]

Colin,

Interesting information there.

There is a short Wiki entry on Kelsey, founded in 1989 …https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelsey_Media

They already have about 90 titles ….so does that perhaps make them bigger or similar in size to Mortons?

The Mortons Print and Mailing divisions (which stay with Mortons) seems to include Digital Editions.

Print editions appear to be under their Publishing Division which goes to Kelsey.

Mortons’ divisions here…. https://www.mortons.co.uk/about/

Ches

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I have no further information at the moment other then being given the heads up’ by the Editor of Model Boats today.

I assume Mortons will be responsible for distributing the digital editions as they will the print ones since the digital ones are basically just electronic facsimiles of the printed issues.

Some immediate obvious questions:

Who has ownership of the digital archives and how will they continue to be made available?

The forums require hosting and continual maintenance (IT staff and moderators) and are part of the Mortons website platform, I can’t see how they could be migrated to Kelsey except an great cost and we all know how that went when they were migrated from MyTimeMedia. Would Kelsey be willing to pay Mortons to manage them and what benefit would it bring them? Kelsey themselves seem not to support the idea of forums and would prefer readers to use Facebook instead, see:

https://shop.kelsey.co.uk/promotion/ppforum?srsltid=AfmBOoqoOShWyzlJQ5uvVqak8EX2MkrvA8KDaO5XVpLpaxIzQ5cpeFzs

Colin

 

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Could be something or nothing.   Change of ownership does not necessarily mean product change too.

Might be wrong, but I think Mortons have only sold their paper printing arm, which prints mags where the content is provided by external customers.  A PDF file! Mortons can still produce ‘ME&W’ and have Kelsey print and distribute it for them and economies of scale might make Kelsey cheaper.

In the same way, I believe Mortons have already outsourced their websites and forums to an external host ‘in the cloud’.   So if Morton’s tiny IT department changes ownership there isn’t a complicated hosting arrangement to disentangle, maybe just who pays the hosting bill.   May have been a reason Mortons migrated from the old bespoke forum to what we have now : WordPress can be hosted anywhere, which increases their options.

As customers we have no idea what they’re doing, or why, other than knowing the goal of companies is to make a profit.

Living in ‘interesting times’ is a curse, but I’m not going to worry until ME&W or the forum changes.

Dave

 

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Dave,

I think there are some misconceptions here.

Kelsey are buying the titles and generating the content. Mortons will confine themselves to distribution whether in print or digitally. Kelsey will not print and distribute as you suggest , the whole point of the change is to separate the editorial and distribution functions.The current ME/MB/MF Editors will be employed by Kelsey in future, probably as self employed contractors as at present. Morton’s IT department will stay with Mortons, no reason to transfer to Kelsey, their main work is on the distribution side, managing the forums inherited from MTM was an unwanted addition. They will be glad to be shot of it.

At present the Forums are integrated into the Mortons produce and distribute website. Logically they should move to Kelsey but that is unlikely to be possible as they are embedded in the Mortons website and you cannot just move them over, WordPress or not, without incurring considerable expense. Mortons never wanted the Forums and Kelsey don’t believe in them and prefer to shift customer interactions to Facebook instead.

Neither company see the forums as commercial assets so there is a strong likelihood that they will be shut down on the basis of ‘Read the Magazine’ or join a Facebook community that they don’t have to spend money on. It all makes commercial sense!

Colin

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Their “commercial sense” will accelerate its demise I fear.

[Colin Bishop]

On Colin Bishop Said:

Dave,

I think there are some misconceptions here.

Kelsey are buying the titles and generating the content. Mortons will confine themselves to distribution whether in print or digitally. Kelsey will not print and distribute as you suggest , the whole point of the change is to separate the editorial and distribution functions.The current ME/MB/MF Editors will be employed by Kelsey in future, probably as self employed contractors as at present. Morton’s IT department will stay with Mortons, no reason to transfer to Kelsey, their main work is on the distribution side, managing the forums inherited from MTM was an unwanted addition. They will be glad to be shot of it.

At present the Forums are integrated into the Mortons produce and distribute website. Logically they should move to Kelsey but that is unlikely to be possible as they are embedded in the Mortons website and you cannot just move them over, WordPress or not, without incurring considerable expense. Mortons never wanted the Forums and Kelsey don’t believe in them and prefer to shift customer interactions to Facebook instead.

Neither company see the forums as commercial assets so there is a strong likelihood that they will be shut down on the basis of ‘Read the Magazine’ or join a Facebook community that they don’t have to spend money on. It all makes commercial sense!

Colin

Thanks for the clarification – you’re better placed to know than me!   Oh dear, time to get the worry beads out…

Dave

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Thanks for the clarification – you’re better placed to know than me! Oh dear, time to get the worry beads out…

Indeed! Forums cost money – somebody has to pick up the bill. People blithely assume these facilities are free – they are not.

 

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Come back Model & Allied Publications, all is forgiven…

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Colin

Everybody understands that forums cost money, and effort, to run.

As far as I’m concerned the forum is what I pay my subs for! Generally things going on in the forum and the comments made on areas that interest me are far more engaging than the magazine content.

Especially as the information density in both ME and MEW has dropped like a stone over the last decade.

Drifting off the specific topic of this thread:-

Obviously, as 70 plus year old card carrying old fart, I have to accept that the percentage of “new and interesting to me” content has to be much less than it was for 20 year old Clive when he first stated buying ME alongside Motorcycle Mechanics. The bike magazines fell by the wayside maybe 500,000 miles ago when more mature Clive got fed up with the mostly juvenile reportage and occasional sampling of perhaps more appropriately age related material revealed an intolerable error content to someone who was there and experienced at the time.

To me the big worry for Model Engineer and Workshop going forward is that, judging by the first issue young Clive magically transmitted to today would probably not sustain interest beyond 3 or 4 years worth of subscriptions at most.

Clearly an editor can only print what is offered and finding writers with both appropriate technical knowledge and the wordsmithery able to appeal to a fairly general audience is difficult. (The stillborn corpses of a dozen or so started but abandoned articles on my hard drive are proof positive that I can’t do the wordsmpthery bit.)

Clive

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

The only saving grace may be that the Chicken Forum mentions lack of activity, not sure how much there was but hopefully at least here there is enough though MB is certainly a lot quieter.

[Colin Bishop]

On Colin Bishop Said:

Forums cost money – somebody has to pick up the bill. People blithely assume these facilities are free – they are not.

I had rather hoped that with a ‘global’ advertiser like PCBWay on board, such expenses  would be adequately covered

🙁

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

That might just cover all the lost advertisers from the right of the page that we used to have

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

As far as I’m concerned the forum is what I pay my subs for!

Yes, but the money is actually spent on producing the magazines. The forum is a business overhead that can only be justified on the basis of members seeing the adverts (why there are so many of them) and encouraging them to buy the magazine, preferably by taking out a subscription.

A forum can be too successful. Military Modelling magazine was closed down by MyTimeMedia because its forum was so successful that nobody was buying the magazine which ceased publication, taking the forum with it. From some of the comments on here it does seem that the ‘free’ forum is in direct competition with the magazines it is supposed to support. No publisher will allow that situation to continue. The Managing Director of MyTimeMedia once made that very clear to me and the Editor of Model Boats but we managed to persuade him not to close it. It remained true than probably the majority of the forum members didn’t buy the magazine and I wonder to what extent that is the case here.

The Model Boats forum is indeed experiencing low levels of activity. We lost a lot of members over the conversion chaos and they haven’t returned as they preferred the old MTM forum. To be fair, the independent Model Boat Mayhem forum has seen a noticeable drop off in activity over the last couple of years as people get older but it still manages to support itself by voluntary donations at the moment.

In the model boating world there seem to be those who buy the magazine and those who are members of forums. There is only limited crossover between the two.

Colin

 

 

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Maybe I’ve gotten hold of the hot end of the soldering iron but I don’t see where the “free forum” comes in.

I always understood that access to the forum, and digital archive, was conditional on having an active subscription. Let the subscription lapse and no forum or archive access. If it’s not done that way it seems a remarkable management oversight.

Especially in these days when seemingly half the up to date internet content is disappearing behind paywalls so paying for access is becoming the norm. I’ve always said that paywalls are silly idea. Far better charge you internet service provider for copyrighted content so basically you pay a certain amount per MB or GB or copyright content per month rather than committing to paid subscriptions. Arranging matters to avoid direct peer to peer transfer is relatively easy as the origin of everything can be tracked.

As has been said on the other threads discussing future content of Model Engineer and Workshop the potential field for articles is very wide indeed. Which makes it difficult to cover any area widely enough and deeply enough to maintain a particular readers interest in the long term. Beginners guides are essential to keep neophyte new blood flowing but by the fourth time round experienced folk will be saying “Not again!”. Similarly articles aimed at the more experienced may lead the neophyte to question whether its worth paying to read about things they don’t understand.

I don’t know how many threads are started each month in the forum but considering each thread as an “article substitute” I’d guess this effectively extends the magazine content from the 20 or so articles in the printed issue to maybe 100 or more. Effective forums also provide space for experienced folk to guide the less experienced, but still quite knowledgeable, through levels of sufficient arcaneness to be commercial suicide if published.

I really don’t see any way of achieving long term survival of a technically based magazine relying on the readership to write articles without having a tightly linked magazine and forum accessible only to paid subscribers.

Facebook is fundamentally for cat pictures!

Clive

[Clive Foster]

On Clive Foster Said:

Maybe I’ve gotten hold of the hot end of the soldering iron but I don’t see where the “free forum” comes in.

I always understood that access to the forum, and digital archive, was conditional on having an active subscription. Let the subscription lapse and no forum or archive access. If it’s not done that way it seems a remarkable management oversight. […]

Yes, I’m afraid you are confusing/conflating two different things

Use of the forum is currently free

Access to the archive requires a ‘digital’ subscription

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Clive, anyone can visit the forum and read the content. Anyone can become a member and post. Digital Subs required for Archive access

If you are only seeing Cat pictures on FB then you are just looking in the wrong place or the Web knows you like pictures of cats and is leading you to them.

As an example Graham Corry of Alyn Foundry fame is unable to “play” with engines let alone get out in the workshop but he posted earlier in the week effectively saying what are people upto. Within 12hrs there were 30 posts all showing what engines members were working on and there is less than 300 members of that group. Compare with the numbers here and hardly anyone seems to be making/doing anything.

Another group owner has just started posting about the restoration of an early Lenoir Engine. More to read there than the last two years worth of ME and he only starte don that engine a couple of weeks ago.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Access to the digital archives is a huge bonus and really adds value to your subscription.

I use the Model Boats digital archives regularly as a research resource even though I have print issues going back to the late 60s. The search facility is worth its weight in gold alone in finding something you half remember but can’t recall exactly when it was. The only downside is that what you thought was a few years back often turns out to be a decade or more….

The forums were originally never seen by the publisher as anything more than a  means of attracting new readers to the magazines but some have taken on a life of their own and in the case of Military Modelling acted as a sort of suicidal parasite!

Edited!

I don’t like Facebook as it doesn’t seem to have any proper structure and older stuff just seems to disappear down rabbit holes never to be seen again. Rather like Whats App. Social media tends to mainly exist in the present. Forum material builds into an information resource if structured correctly  (until somebody inevitably pulls the plug and it vanishes into nothingness)

Colin

 

[Author]

Posts