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Has Velonews Turned to Crap?

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Jun 16, 2009
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badboyberty said:
NO. Always was crap unless you're an American and a fan of Leipheimer, Horner and Armstrong.

Zinn is the only worthwhile contributor.

I disagree on both counts ...

It used to be a good magazine many, many years back - back when it was printed on newsprint and came out more frequently. In those days it was actually a rival for Winning and Cycling Weekly ... And yes, I am talking that far back ... But I agree that it has been crap for absolutely ages since ...

As for Zinn - sometimes he's worth reading ... but most of the time I find he favours overly technical "solutions" so that he's dropped a long way in my estimations. Cases in point are his recommendations for threading gear cables into Campag Ergo levers and his articles on beating cross bike fork shudder. In saying this, I'm sure that he's a better mechanic than I am - but I just think that over time he's fallen into a typical techie's trap of overlooking easy and effective low tech solutions ...
 
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Anonymous

Guest
I jumped on the "yes" bandwagon during what I'll call their Twelve Days of Radio Shack, but they are doing a nice job covering the Astana camp. If Contador and Armstrong raced each other, I would expect coverage to be biased, but for now they're supplying info and some nice pics.
 
Jun 22, 2009
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VN used to be the first place I looked every morning, but I rarely even look at their site any more. And although I did renew my mag subscription, I'm not pleased with the reduced size. I loved the big color pictures that opened every issue, and their race coverage was great. I just got a CycleSport subscription, and I really like the photography and the attitude. Cheeky they are!
 

ravens

BANNED
Nov 22, 2009
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all advertising supported media is under enormous pressure. many newspapers and mags are becoming 'net only outlets. the revenues for 'net media is a small fraction of tangible media, yet the same amount of work goes into journalism (whether you agree with the journalistic conclusions, reporting and content is a topic for another thread).

Niche media such as cycling faces the same pressures and perhaps even greater pressure due to their much smaller audiences, but due to the rabid appetite of these audiences they are ripe for being co-opted by larger well-funded entities (spelled: 'corporate' for those of you who see them as evil) to 'sprinkle' their sponsorship into the actual news. This is not new, but the degree to which it is obvious is becoming greater and the ad masquerading as a news article is even more obvious.

I like Rouleur. All I need to know about cycling I know. I just like their photography so much better. See their flickr pages. And even if I could afford Rapha (I can't), I'd try to get my hands on some x-bionic instead. I like to read the history of great events and races and rouleur covers that too. Current events? The basic news is widely available for free. That's a problem for those who incorporate current news as core to their business.
 
I just posted on the Velonews comments board a couple of days ago about the "Lance abandons internal testing program", responded once and regretted it. After reading the rest of the boards pages I just started laughing. Talk about blind worship. Won´t be returning any time soon. Makes sense though, how they report and who their audience is. Too bad, it seems that it once was a good source of info or was I blind too?
 
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Anonymous

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Take it where you find it

VN coverage of the "Road Rage Doctor" was much better than CN.
VN had article on LA abandoning internal drug program. I haven't seen that anywhere on CN.
VN "Wilcockson" has always been extremely biased toward the UCI over ASO or WADA.

Both seem to be rapidly evolving

But why make a laundry list of everything that's bad? Read them all and take away what you like.
 
Apr 1, 2009
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brewerjeff said:
VN coverage of the "Road Rage Doctor" was much better than CN.
VN had article on LA abandoning internal drug program. I haven't seen that anywhere on CN.
VN "Wilcockson" has always been extremely biased toward the UCI over ASO or WADA.

Both seem to be rapidly evolving

But why make a laundry list of everything that's bad? Read them all and take away what you like.

+1

I sort of grew up on velonews and loved to get it when it was a newspaper format. It was much more balanced then it seemed to me, of course it was focused on the US (I'm Canadian) but that was/is understandable. I do love their live coverage of the Giro, tour and Vuelta and often watch races and follow on my computer. One of my most remembers issues is when Andy Hamstead won the giro and in all that snow.... ahhh but I'm dating myself

I will defend VN in that I think they are giving the people what they want, look how many posts on this forum are about LA.... makes me sick but that is what people want to talk about. I once sent a message to Charles P (the LUG) and complained about the Giro coverage and asked why they were talking about LA so much. He replied that he gets a ton of questions about LA and while he personally realized that LA wasn't a player it's what people wanted to hear about. He sounded pretty sick of it, but they do a very good job with he live ticker and go to it when ever there is a GT and come here for everyday news.
 
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Anonymous

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Ditto

St. Elia said:
+1

I sort of grew up on velonews and loved to get it when it was a newspaper format. It was much more balanced then it seemed to me, of course it was focused on the US (I'm Canadian) but that was/is understandable. I do love their live coverage of the Giro, tour and Vuelta and often watch races and follow on my computer. One of my most remembers issues is when Andy Hamstead won the giro and in all that snow.... ahhh but I'm dating myself

I will defend VN in that I think they are giving the people what they want, look how many posts on this forum are about LA.... makes me sick but that is what people want to talk about. I once sent a message to Charles P (the LUG) and complained about the Giro coverage and asked why they were talking about LA so much. He replied that he gets a ton of questions about LA and while he personally realized that LA wasn't a player it's what people wanted to hear about. He sounded pretty sick of it, but they do a very good job with he live ticker and go to it when ever there is a GT and come here for everyday news.

I'm with you on the live coverage. Charles P does an excellent job.