One of the skills of an editor is to be able to expand, or adapt, what can be little more than some notes on the back of a fag packet. Tony M was particularly good at that, I can think of others, Dave H, for instance. This encouraged those who felt they had not the skills to create a pretty much oven ready item, to still contribute. Very often these items were the handy corner, or end of page, fillers. In many cases they were the items that focused new interest on a topic leading to more information surfacing. Much as Richard does on here by presenting a picture, sometimes with little backing info. Some of those threads spark interest and even at such a tangent you wonder how we got there. Nuggets of fact, creating interest and feed back. That is as much the lifeblood of a magazine as the in depth look at Venice's Microcars, for instance.
Now I have dropped out of many clubs, so I cannot judge. But one reason I opted out was that this free flow of information, comment and matters arising was not happening in club magazines, and in some clubs was not wanted. That goes totally against what I think makes a great magazine. Most mags carry a wonderful proviso along the lines that 'This publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the Club or Editor'. I wish more folk would use that leeway to stretch the limits. Its no idle statement. If I wanted propaganda, I would join a political party.
