It's seems that TPJ lasted exactly one issue as a separately printed supplement to SysAdmin. From now on the TPJ content will be printed as part of the main SysAdmin magazine. I haven't seen an announcement anywhere, but got the info in an email from CMP. I've put a story up at use Perl; and Jon Orwant has confirmed that the information is correct.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."

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(ichimunki) Re: TPJ Going Again?
by ichimunki (Priest) on Oct 31, 2001 at 20:37 UTC
    My question is this: do the members of the Perl community see value in having a dedicated, print magazine on the topic of Perl? Aren't there a fair number of web sites that are devoted to Perl, Perl news, fun with Perl (Poetry/ObFu), Perl tips, and general Perl Perl Perl?

    Making magazines is actually pretty easy-- provided you are able to negotiate with writers and such. It's selling subscriptions and advertisements that are the hard part-- that is, financing the magazine. It seems to me that there is some demand for a Perl magazine, but that the one that's been going for a while is not doing so well.

    There are some serious questions I'd like to ask in this regard. Would the community willingly pay more for an ad-free magazine? Are there qualified writers who would be willing to trade articles for ad-space (at least for early issues), thus lessening the capital required to get going? How often is often enough? And most importantly what features should a Perl magazine have (either stuff that is somehow lacking in existing publications, or stuff that is not in one single magazine)?

    Then there are other questions... like what kind of format is most useful, should it be standard magazine size? Would newsprint be acceptable? Would newsprint be more acceptable if the magazine were more frequent? These sorts of things massively affect cost, but also affect perception. How would they affect your perceptions?
[reply]
      do the members of the Perl community see value in having a dedicated, print magazine on the topic of Perl?
      YES ! 100 times YES !

      Would the community willingly pay more for an ad-free magazine?
      Yes ! but ads wouldn't annoy me if they are Perl/Unix/Open source related...

      And most importantly what features should a Perl magazine have
      For my part a bigger monthly TPJ would be fine (so I guess the answer is a lot of good quality articles)


      Sadly I don't agree with you when you say Making magazines is actually pretty easy, It's a pretty huge work (AFAIK) it require a lot of money...
      But I still hope that some people will hear our call for a REAL Perl magazine...

      So come on, Perl lovers ! Stand up and shout :
      I want a REAL Perl Journal !
      (Just thinking with all the high profiles, O'reilly connected people, etc... It should be possible to manage something)

      "Only Bad Coders Code Badly In Perl" (OBC2BIP)
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Re: TPJ Going Again?
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Oct 31, 2001 at 19:55 UTC
    I was a subscriber to TPJ before it 'went under' and after a few months received both the promotional material (a single reply card) and a free issue of SysAdmin magazine with a new copy of TPJ bundled in the plastic shrink wrap. Now, in order to get TPJ you needed to subscribe to SysAdmin, and they would give it to you as a supplement. I thumbed through the SysAdmin mag and I just was not happy with it. I wanted TPJ, but not if I had to hand these guys more money for (in my opinion) a crap magazine. I just passed on the whole deal. I sure hope somebody produces a Perl only magazine with a monthly distribution schedule that you can subscribe to outright. I think it is an insult to make TPJ an addendum to anything and, heck, as soon as I am done writing this I am going to send some flame e-mail to SysAdmin. Have Fun!

    Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

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