Re: Quattro Quarterly ethical conflict....

[MHLIGGINS@aol.com]

	Dear Anonymous:

	I've read a lot of the stuff you've written through the years. Seen your
quotes in magazines articles and lots of books. At least I assume you're the
same person because they always had your name at the end. You've come up with
some good stuff in the past, but I'm not sure you didn't "step in it" this
time.
	You made comments regarding ethical conflict in a membership magazine,
specifically citing articles by John Beckius. Are you telling the q-list that
you were surprised that you were able (by a great deal of thorough
investigation of course, at some personal expense as well) to dig out the
information that John Beckius runs a company that sells stuff for Audis? 
	Who else would you want to have write technically oriented articles about
Audis besides someone who works on them? A guy (gal?) that works on
Toyotas???? Do you want to pay $40 a year to have technically oriented
material written by someone who guesses? Or would you prefer someone who
actually KNOWS some of what they're writing about?
	Now, area number two... You ever edit a member magazine? I have. And it can
be a major pain in the ass. There are two basic options. First option is to
print what the members send you. The second option is to write it yourself.
Option two gets very old very fast, unless you are EXTREMELY vain. 
	So, unless you've vain you go with option Number First and you learn that the
members want to read. So you try to get as much material as you can to fill
the space. Pictures are nice, but club members like technical stuff -- that's
why most of them are in the club to start with. So, you print as much "stuff"
as you can, and you hope it's good. Especially the tech stuff. Your editing is
usually limited to trying to make the writer look as coherent as you can. And
if s/he tells the members about a sale they've got going on, you try to tone
it down so it's not outlandish. One thing I never permitted was for someone to
say that their product was better than someone else's. If they were selling
products that were made by a third party, I couldn't care less -- because
ANYONE could have access to it through the same channels.
	Area three. The Quattro Club is a small organization. Most of the members can
read at least as well as you can. They are also about as astute as you are.
Therefore most all of us already knew Beckius was a merchant of Audi-related
items. The club I edited for was small as well. Only the newbies were
surprised to learn that some of the people submitting articles actually gained
a portion of income from club related merchandising. And there were some
things I refused to print because the submitters spent more time slamming the
competition than hyping their own products/services.
	I said all of the above to say this: if you don't like John Bekius' articles
then you should write your own and send them to Karen Chadwick. The chances
are pretty good that they'll be printed. But I would recommend using a pen
name, Anonymous just doesn't have a good ring to it, you know?

	Anyhow, that's how it looked in Bucksnort.
	--ml

	P.S. -- invest in a spell checker. I corrected your spelling in the
header.....