The new web page of the Marine Corps Gazette went up this morning. MCG has a lot of plans for the new digital version of the monthly journal - will keep the Council updated.
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The new web page of the Marine Corps Gazette went up this morning. MCG has a lot of plans for the new digital version of the monthly journal - will keep the Council updated.
And they have a direct, named link here as well. :)
Marc
Outstanding! I've been waiting for them to improve their webspace.
Bill and I had a meeting with the editor, Col John Keenan (USMC Ret.), several weeks ago. He has a lot of great plans for the digital version of the magazine, access to the Gazette database (previous issues back to 1917), a forum (similar to the SWC) and other items to significantly improve the magazine as a whole.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Blair
It also looks as if it will be pay only, which will reduce the number of people reading it as well as their online community.
Marc
... it will be for pay. The Gazette is owned by the Marine Corps Association - a non-for-profit. That said, if it were for free there would be no Gazette - not sure what your point is??? Not everyone is as gracious as Bill and I - free magazine and forum - with hundreds of hours and bucks invested. Hmmm...Quote:
Originally Posted by marct
:D "put it out of your mind...."Quote:
Originally Posted by SWJED
There's a lot to be said for charging for content, like being able to buy food :). However, there is also a lot to be said for making content free. A lot of academic journals are moving towards one of three revenue generation models:
- pay for all
- totally free
- mixed
The pay for all model relies on selling electronic subscriptions to libraries or via associations (e.g. as a member of X you get Y number of "free" subscriptions). It does generate revenue, but it is also monopolistic in a way that makes it hard for non-members to ever get involved without paying exhorbitant amounts of money.
Many journals are mvoing towards the "totally free", i.e. an open source model using the creative commons licence. The well organizaed ones rely on donations, advertising and/or grants to make money, and some have been quite successful. A totally free model allows a lot of poeple to access the content and become involved in the community of interest.
From a rough count, most journals seem to be in sometype of mixed format, where there is a for pay component, usually the current years, and back issues are free. A variant on that is something like Nature which also has "special articles" that are free.
All of these models have their own strengths and weaknesses that can usually be expressed as a trade-off between trying to generate a predictable amount of money via subscriptions, vs. building a community of interest.
Back to the Marine Gazette for a moment. It has been free and is now moving to a pay model. That will significantly reduce the readership and, probably, cut into the afvertising revenue (if any). It will also mean that it will be hard for academics to access it and send their students to access it. Okay, I admit that there is a chunk of self interest there, but it will change the access dynamics :).
Marc
Marc,
The Gazette has never been free - not since 1917. That said, the November and December issues were free online to introduce their new site. Also, one or two articles in the past were posted for free on line.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Okay. That's probably why I was getting the impression :). As a suggestion, they should try and make at least one article and the editorial available free online for each issue. It acts as a "loss leader" (although there is no actual loss since production costs remain the same).
Marc
Plus, I'm not sure if they've really looked at attracting or adding an "outside" audience. Personally, I think that would be a "good thing" for them, since the Marine Corps as a whole has always had a very positive outlook on history and there are a number of outside scholars who might be able to contribute to the discussion. Having limited free online content would be a plus for them in that category.
There is an interesting shift that seems to happen in democracies where they start with the idea of individual rights and responsabilities balancing. This allows their citizens to accept what are, basically, non-deomocratic organizations such as the military as both a "necessary evil" and as a balanced payback to individual freedom. Basically, it allows for a sense of "duty" to the state whereby individual freedom may, for a time, be abrogated for the "greater good". This does seem to operate even in class segmented democracies such as 18th century England, 19th century Canada as well as in the early US.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Blair
I think one good hallmark of it is the social status afforded to people holding commissions. For example, my great grandfather was pretty much socially required to hold a commission to maintain his social standing; and he was a portrait painter! He also fought as part of the Canadian troop contingent in the Boer War, and it certainly influenced his art work. His Master Piece work showed my grandmother at age 6 wearing his tunic and carrying his sword from the Boer War and is entitled "Daughter of the Empire": it certainly captures the sense of duty to the Crown (state) that was seen as inherent around 1900.
This situation seems to have changed dramatically after WWI and, by the end of WWII, most Western democracies seem to have lost that individual sense of social duty - at least on the general social level. In Canada and the US, this seems to have peaked in the 1960's (I don't think we need details here, do we <wry grin>?). The 1960's also seem to have marked a major divergence in the generally perceived place of the military in society and a naive ideological belief in cultural relativism (taken to exteremes).
The Jungian archetype of the Defensor Hominem seems to have practically disappeared, at least in the general society - along with any real knowledge of human history;) . The "military", broadly construed, comes to be seen as "atavistic", a "survival" and the remnant of a less "enlightened" (read "politically correct in a parlour pink fashion") society. This trend has been exacerbated with the shift to cyberspace with it's compression of space and lack of time depth (long argument here that I'm cutting out).
So, now the Marine Gazette is going online and the question I have to ask is "Why"? What is the goal behind this move? Is it merely to reduce printing and shipping costs by taking advantage of the structure of electronic publishing? If that is the primary reason, then a pure "for pay" system will achieve it. Personally, however, I think it is important for any military organization to take active advantage of cyberspace and consider the broader social good which, to my mind, means (in part) reintegrating the value of "social duty" into the general culture.
Steve, you are quite right to point out that they should take advantage of "a number of outside scholars who might be able to contribute to the discussion". These "outside scholars" will, inevitably, influence their students as well, and the more articles available for free, the greater this influence will be. Personally, I think a blended format would be best, with some type of "forum" - a key article or two and a discussion space for that article. Something alone the lines of a "virtual seminar".
My reasoning for this is somewhat convoluted but, in general, it goes like this:
- The hallmark of a democratic society where the military is valued is a society which engages in a profound relection upon its actions: thought and debate, not sound bytes.
- High social valuation of the military implies and goes hand in hand with a high social valuation of the individual in a democracy (okay, certain limits apply to this and it's usually only a high value to officers and institutions).
- Rhetorically, the military must be different from other social institutions lest its charter (foundation myth, raison d'etre etc.) become indistinguishable from these other institutions. (As a side note, the charter of the USMC is probably the most unique in the US military.)
- This charter must be communicated to the general society in such a manner that it a) engages and b) elicits respect even in disagreement.
- Members of the military must be willing to engage in reasoned debate outside of military venues that share a similar valuation of reasoned debate.
(BTW the technical terms I'm using here come from Bronislaw Malinowski's Towards a Scientific Theory of Culture as does the analytic framework.)
Marc
The Marine Corps Gazette Forum is now open for business.
It does seem a touch on the "quite" side over there. I think SWJED has the most posts...
Marc
But their plan is to link from articles for discussion - hopefully that will happen and things will pick up with the Feb. issue. Things were a bit slow around here when we first started...Quote:
Originally Posted by marct
True; it's like that with most communities. I just finished reading the "Winning on the Information Battlefield article", but there doesn't seem to be an embedded link to the forums. Will that show up in the February Issue?Quote:
Originally Posted by SWJED
Marc