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Farewell, PC Magazine. I haven't read you for years, but I'll miss you

I gather from Martyn Daniels' blog that PC Magazine is to cease publication. I find this sad, as I started my professional writing career doing pieces for computer magazines, and PC Magazine was the daddy of them all.

I had already had one sad moment when PC Week died. Although not my very first publication, PC Week was where I started writing regularly. This free weekly survived on advertising and job ads - it was the rise of IT job websites that killed it. Now PC Magazine is moving to be web only.

Although I never wrote for it (though I did have a column for quite a while in its UK home-grown rival, Personal Computer World), PC Magazine was the authoritative source when I first became involved in PCs back in the mid-80s (yes, children, we had PCs in the 1980s). Back then, I couldn't have done my job without it. Now it has virtually gone virtual.
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  1. Jane Smith21 November 2008 at 09:45

    Oh, my word--you're THAT Brian Clegg. I think I used to know you all those years ago, when I worked in computer games publishing... good grief.

    (I doubt that you'd remember me--I worked in sales and marketing and our paths rarely crossed; but I did know of you, because I used to read your pieces.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg21 November 2008 at 12:58

    Jane - I've always felt I was THAT Brian Clegg, but I've never realised why...

    Seriously, it's quite possible. I used to review games for a couple of VNU publications off an on, sometime for PC Week, most consistently for their demised online magazine, V3.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jane Smith21 November 2008 at 13:30

    I'm sure I recognise your name in that context, but wonder if I was involved in the industry a little earlier than you?

    I worked mostly for Argos Press Software, and for TelecomSoft: my friend, the infamous Jane Cavanagh, who I worked with for some years, went on to form SCI and make her own personal fortune while I became a writer and made naff-all. I write for the satisfaction now, and the irony.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Brian Clegg21 November 2008 at 17:59

    It's all in the fuzzy past! I wrote from PC Week from around 1993 and V3 was around 1996, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Martin Fenner21 November 2008 at 21:47

    Byte was another very popular and influential magazine that stopped print publication (in 1998).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Brian Clegg22 November 2008 at 11:18

    Absolutely. Byte was for the real, roll up your sleeves and manipulate bits by hand experience.

    ReplyDelete

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