Delurking to cautiously suggest the following: there's nothing semi-pro about Locus, or Clarkesworld, or Weird Tales ... They are all very professional, and quite accomplished.
Once the category may have made sense, but at a time when the entire publishing industry is taking on water, profitability or circulation seems a poor measure of professionalism. It might make sense to recast the categories according to circulation and online/offline publishing status, get rid of the "pro" and "semi" distinctions, and leave room for the fanzines themselves to have their own territory. The SPJ Digma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Journalism do distinguish their nominees by medium, circulation and mass-market vs. "independent" status ... for example. It's a very fair, inclusive taxonomy, fwiw. Much love and admiration, Josh / The Fabulist Dot Org On Feb 12, 2012, at 10:46 AM, Tom Becker <t...@fanac.com> wrote: > At 9:25 PM -0800 2/9/12, Adrienne Foster wrote: >> >> I'm not sure how the SF community is going to respond to this, but I just >> posted an essay detailing the reasons why I believe Locus should not be >> nominated as a semi-prozine for the Hugo Award. For anyone interested in >> reading it, you'll find it at the following URL: >> >> http://www.epinions.com/content_5605007492 >> >> If you feel Locus deserves a Hugo nomination, I hope you'll consider >> nominating its editors in the Best Editor--Short Form category. > > Hi Adrienne, > > As you can see in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Fanzine>, > Locus won the Best Fanzine award eight times in total, and four times in a > row prior to the creation of the Semiprozine category. Locus has always been > a very good and very successful zine, and it deserved its awards, but not at > the expense of all other deserving fanzines for the rest of all time, which > is how things looked in 1982-3. The Semiprozine category was created for > Locus. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Semiprozine > > Locus won all of the Best Semiprozine awards from when the category was > created in 1984 through 1992. It was a big surprise in 1993 when Science > Fiction Chronicle won (especially at ConFrancisco where Locus is local). > Since then the category has been more competitive. Locus has won several more > times, but so have others. The most recent three awards have gone to Weird > Tales and Clarkesworld (twice). This seems pretty good to me. What exactly do > you think is broken and how are you proposing to fix it? > > Also I don't think it matters whether a publication is struggling or not. > Most of the entrants in every category are struggling. The whole field is > struggling. Locus stands out as a relative success but it hasn't been easy > even for them. > > Regards, > > Tom > > -- > Tom Becker <t...@fanac.com> > Potlatch n. A science fiction convention where readers and > writers meet on common ground. http://potlatch-sf.org > _______________________________________________ > Basfa mailing list > Basfa@lists.basfa.org > http://lists.basfa.org/listinfo.cgi/basfa-basfa.org
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