Date: April 3, 2010
Title: Interview with Robert Naeye of Sky & Telescope, Part 2
Podcaster: Mike Simonsen
Organization: Slacker Astronomy: http://www.slackerastronomy.org/
Description: Mike Simonsen from Slacker Astronomy interviews Robert Naeye, Editor-in-Chief of Sky & Telescope magazine about the the current issues facing print publishing, and specifically astronomy publishing today. This is part 2,– part 1 was aired on March 7, 2010.
Bio: Slacker Astronomy is a light-hearted podcast that wanders the astronomical road-less-traveled. Visit us at http://www.slackerastronomy.org/.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Michael Geoff.
Transcript:
Michael Koppelman: Hello welcome to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Welcome to the Slacker Astronomy podcast. Today we’re wrapping up our interview with Bob Naeye, editor-in-chief of Sky and Telescope magazine.
In the rest of the interview Mike Simonsen asks Bob about science journalism, traditional magazine type journalism and the publishing industry in general and how it’s affecting what they’re doing over at Sky and Telescope magazine.
Again, the entire second half of this interview is over at slackerastronomy.org. This is just the part we can cram into ten minutes. Also in the extended version we have Doug, Mike Simonsen and myself talking about these same sorts of issues like the internet age in publishing and science journalism and how all those things are coming together.
So, when you finish up this ten minutes come on over to Slacker Astronomy and you can hear the context that surrounds it. Without further ado, once again Mike Simonsen interviewing Robert Naeye, editor-in-chief of Sky and Telescope magazine. Take it away Mike.
Mike Simonsen: Let’s shift gears here. Let’s talk about the media and S & T in general. Obviously print media faces some challenges coming up. What challenges do you see the print media in general facing and in particular Sky and Telescope?
Bob Naeye: Obviously there are several different factors weighing in. The short term we have the global economic crisis which obviously it hasn’t just hit the print media, it has hit all across the board. Not just the United States, but many other countries.
In fact I got an e-mail today from an amateur astronomer in Italy saying that the crisis has really hit that country very hard right now. I felt bad about that but obviously it’s not a great time for example for all magazines for advertising.
You know Sky and Telescope has gotten thinner but so has just about every other magazine published in the west – in the United States and Europe.
Mike: Right.
Bob: I subscribe to about a dozen magazines and every single one of them has suffered loss of advertising. That’s not a secret. Then there’s the longer term trend which is the rise of the internet and the fact that more and more people are getting their information online.
I’m not being critical of that but the newspapers and magazines years ago made a decision to give information away for free and not charge for content. Because there are a lot of other people supplying free information on the web, there’s just an expectation out that that content is free.
“I’m on the internet; I shouldn’t have to pay for content.” The problem is that not all content is created equal.
Mike: [Laughter] Yeah, you’re liable to get what you paid for.
Bob: That’s right, there’s really good information out there and great blogs and podcasts like Slacker Astronomy but there are a lot of mediocre or really not particularly high quality content out there. It’s all over the map.
I think challenges for Sky and Telescope but other print media as well is finding a way to convert web hits into revenue. For example I know the New York Times is about to start charging for content. We’ll see how that works.
One thing we have talked about though and we haven’t made any firm decision yet is maybe have some kind of model where subscribers get bonus content on the internet that maybe isn’t available to the general public but additional material. Maybe some of it is stuff that supplements particular articles in a given issue. Or have entire articles that maybe we don’t really plan to run in the magazine for whatever reason but maybe is still something that we want to get out there to the public.
One of the things we have happening and this is in someway a good problem (although it is a little depressing for me personally) is we have way more people wanting to write for S & T than we have space in the magazine to publish. It seems like every week I’m telling people your article proposal or sometimes they sent us the full article – some of this stuff is pretty good but we have a finite number of pages in the magazine. We can’t publish everything that gets submitted to us.
Mike: We can’t put it online for free and pay them for their writing.
Bob: Yeah and then even if we put it online we still need to edit it, get images for it, make sure we get credit for images. That’s one thing I don’t think people understand about magazines. It’s not just editing the articles.
There’s the image acquisition, putting together the illustrations, getting permission from the photographers and contracting out and paying. One of the secrets of Sky and Telescope I guess is – you know people see the finished product but they don’t see all the work that goes into it.
I’m not going to say it’s like a sausage grinder you know like Congress or something like that. We work pretty efficiently. We work pretty well as a team.
Mike: It helps that you all love what you’re doing. [Laughter]
Bob: Yeah, that does help. Believe me, everybody on our staff feels really honored and privileged to be putting out a magazine about astronomy. I guess I’m biased but I think astronomy is the coolest thing that human beings do.
Mike: It’s the second oldest profession. [Laughter]
Bob: That’s right. We’re trying to understand our place in this enormous universe. I think that’s really cool that you can go out at night and see some really cool stuff. Get a telescope and look at a globular cluster like M13 or M5, M15, M92 – that is really cool.
Looking at the Rosette nebula, the Vail nebula, the Orion nebula, the Ring nebula, the Dumbbell, you’re seeing like real important processes out there in the Universe. You’re seeing it through your own eyes in real life.
That’s why for me, I am still really much more of an eyeball to eyepiece observer. I haven’t really dabbled seriously in astrophotography. To me, I love looking at these beautiful pictures that you see every day, but for me I still love that visceral feel of WOW for me still comes from looking at things through a telescope or even naked eye or binoculars in a dark sky.
Mike: So, part of S & T’s role in the future is to kind of spread the love.
Bob: Exactly and try to get more people involved. That’s something that I’ve wondered and this may sound a little bit crazy but why aren’t more people interested in astronomy? I think there is like 305 million people in the U.S. right now. A lot of them are very young kids but we’ve got maybe a few hundred thousand kind of serious amateur astronomers.
We have certainly millions of people who might read an article on the internet or in a newspaper about some new Hubble discovery. But you know the number of people who are really seriously interested in astronomy and are really knowledgeable at some level like – maybe I’m just biased because its’ my own interest – but I sometimes wonder why more people aren’t interested in astronomy. Do you feel that way Mike?
Mike: Definitely and to me it is shocking that it is such a low number, that it’s not a million people.
Bob: Right.
Mike: It’s not even half a million people as far as I can tell. It’s maybe 250,000 or 350,000, somewhere in that ballpark. You know who buy magazines, read articles, have a telescope or binoculars, and can name a couple of bright stars in the sky or a constellation or two. Just even a rudimentary knowledge and know why the moon shows phases and can name all nine planets.
Bob: That’s right [laughter] and I’m not going to argue with you, I’m going to agree with you on that. I should mention there was a film put out about 20 or 30 years ago now called “My Private Universe”. The guy who produced the film went around on graduation day at Harvard and none of the graduates of Harvard – one of our great universities – understood that like a year is the time it takes the Earth to go around the sun. This is like you know, Astronomy 101.
This is something I’m thinking if you graduate from college in the United States – whatever college – you should know at least that; and even maybe as you mentioned, why the moon has phases. There are huge numbers of people who don’t even know the most basic things about astronomy.
I certainly think in the coming century with the explosion of technology and the rise of other countries, having science literacy is going to be really important to America’s future and the world’s future.
Any role that Sky & Telescope can play in educating and getting people interested in and excited about astronomy, we want to be involved with that.
Mike: Hey, thanks a lot Bob. You’ve been great. It’s been a lot of fun. We’re shaking hands and smiling. Thanks a lot Bob.
Michael: We had to end it there but like I said there’s more over at slackerastronomy.org – come check it out. Thanks for listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.
This transcript is not an exact match to the audio file. It has been edited for clarity. Transcription and editing by Cindy Leonard.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Astrosphere New Media Association. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.