Julie Boatman Leaves AOPA Pilot

[Jonathan Baron]

I heard the Nordo News Today, oh boy. Julie Boatman has left AOPA effective January 2nd, She, along with Alton Marsh, kept AOPA Pilot magazine from going too far astray from GA, and helped make that magazine the finest of all for a precious few months.

The latest issue of Pilot did a Moose Stall. As I read it, it felt as if all the editors and writers had been kidnapped and replaced by clowns with wads of dollars stuffed into their balloon britches. An impostor must have wrote the normally wonderful Chip Wright article. Sticking a hotel plastic key card in some RJ’s panel to keep charts from falling is not “Flying on the Cheap.” But you, my Bellanca brothers, know that, along with every mother******* reader who had to look at the cover several times to make sure it was, indeed, AOPA Pilot and not a sales brochure for Diamond Aircraft. Her final article was, sadly, a report of the latest Cirrus half million dollar plastic sculpture. Such a long way, alas, from her articles about taking on Idaho's Soldier Bar in a 172, spinning a 150 under Bill Kershner's tutelage shortly before his passing, and being welcomed to Moontown in anything with wings.

What's worse, she's off to some Cessna Pilot Centers management job. I doubt you've seen the latest Cessna/King IFR training materials. They are utterly dreadful. One presenter uses a bad batch of spirit gum to mount a stage moustache on his thin upper lip, while speaking in an awful, phony French accent during the segment on receiving and reading back clearances. These exist in that realm of unintended comedy occupied by Plan 9 from Outer Space. I half expected “What’s our clearance Clarence?” and “What’s our vector, Victor?”

If you are an AOPA member, and you have any feelings about this, make sure you drop Pilot's Editor-in-Chief, Thomas Haynes, a note urging he select a replacement who writes about the likes of us in GA's vanishing mainstream. His email address is thomas.haines@aopa.org

Jonathan

 

[Woodwing]

It seems that it is difficult to find good GA articles these days. I had a very strong respect for Julie and was sad to here she is moving on. I have always enjoyed the humor of Rod Machado at AOPA. There is a pilot that lives just north of me in Crookston that has writen some great articles, Mike Vivion is his name. He runs the DNR aviation program at U of MN Crookston. I recently hosted Jessica Ambats from Plane and Pilot Magazine at our resort. She is a photographer and does some writing, she recieved her Seaplane Rating and I hope to see the article in Plane and Pilot soon. She actualy posted a HUGE two page shot of my Bellanca in the last issue. She deserves a big thumbs up for posting that shot.

 

[Jonathan Baron]

There's indeed a problem with GA magazines - some due to factors that would bedevil any editor.

I cancelled my subscription to Plane and Pilot due to those *constant* features on "affordable" this and that sort of aircraft class. These were poorly researched, and the reported prices - especially for complex aircraft - were silly-low. Yes, you can find an old Bonanza for 50K but you'd need to throw at least the purchase price (or double that) to make it properly viable.

Sport Aviation became a soup sandwich that lost its editorial identity and went wide and shallow, rather than focused and deep as it had been. Vintage became thin, full of typos, and stuffed with reprinted articles.

Flying...sadly it lost its way long ago, as it never replaced the likes of Baxter, Bach, and Morgan (not that you really could replace a Gordon Baxter or Richard Bach) with interesting writers. After all, who wants to read about the flying surgeon with his turbo prop Piper twin, or the gal who lapses endlessly into purple prose and cannot describe a human being?

AOPA was the best for a year. You had a mix of old and new, high dollar and mainstream GA. Then the articles about Stinsons and Ercoups and their like went away, Chip Wright - who'd gotten a strong, positive response from readers for his "Crab Run" story and other down to earth tales - started doing the airline pilot stuff, they hired new editors to write (writers write, editors edit), stopped accepting freelance pieces "unless they're on technique and safety" (their editor-in-chief's words), and stopped covering used airplanes and pilot products mainstream pilots can afford.

Basically you're stuck. The big "slicks" need the high dollar advertisers whose products can only be afforded by ten percent of their readers. This puzzles me with regard to AOPA Pilot given the high dues and its non profit status.

The other problem is that veteran readers tire of those repetitive safety articles, particularly the seasonal ones. Yes, there are thunderstorms in the spring, density altitude problems in the summer, shorter days in the late fall, and fast moving storms with plenty of ice aloft in the winter. But you need to run pieces on these things to be a responsible publication.

Print magazines are ultimately going to be marginalized by the online world. Pilots can get more information pertinent to them online than they ever will in the major magazines, and all the interesting writers have their own web sited and Web Logs (or Blogs as most people call them). AvWeb is the best example of where aviation journalism, news, and interesting commentary is going. The slicks will continue, as newspapers will, but they will diminish in importance and prominence.

Jonathan

 

[lwford]

JB, you are sOOOO right. It seems nowhere can we find a little guy airplane owner. All this Bull about affordable planes is just that. These planes that the MAGS love cost double of the houses we little people live in. They basicly live in another world. Just once I would love to read an article about the little guy who finally bought a Cessna 150 for 14k and flys when he can on the weekends. He has a small time IA help him with the maintanence and all his new questions about airplane ownership. I still say the movement is dying priced in outer space! Not until some poor renter picks up a Mag and reads about that little guy who just bought his Cessna 150 and how he affords it, will that thought enter his mind---Hey I can do that. Lynn N9818B :mrgreen:

 

[kgassert]

If anyone wants to do such an article I have a subject for them. A friend of mine bought a 15K Ercoupe and I have not worked on any of my projects since he got it. We do have most of the bugs worked out of it now but the budget is very limited.

Kevin