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In Reply to: RE: Negative Reviews Are Not the Issue. posted by Montejay on July 22, 2009 at 11:48:19
Although they seem to have a very hard time getting the magazine to me, I've been a regular Stereophile subscriber for quite a while . . . and I don't recall reading many reviews in that magazine that fit your description of a poor review. Most of them sort out the pro's and con's of the equipment under test.
The description you set out applies far better to any number of Internet e-zine reviews -- that I formerly read and now have pretty much stopped reading. That is the difference between a professional review and one that's not.
Since there are quite a large number of Stereophile reviews available to anyone on-line, your case would be a whole lot more persuasive if you linked to one as an example of the defects that you claim exist.
But that appears to take too much effort.
On the absence of negative reviews point that you are busy tryint to wiggle out of, you are conflating the "Consumer Reports" model of reviewing with what Stereophile and the other mags actually do.
CR attempts to survey the universe of a particular product -- washers, cars, TVs, house paints -- and then ranks them or classifies them into "check-rated" "not recommended" and so on.
Neither Stereophile nor any other mag does that. They do not survey everything in the market and tell you "what's best." They simply review stuff that they decide to review . . . and their reasons appear to be varied. It also appears that lots of the stuff they review is something that they've heard before at a show or that someone has recommended to them as being worthy of a review. So, when they do a review, it's not like they have no idea of what they're getting into.
But, really, why would they waste the time -- and the ink -- on reviewing a bad product?
If someone could come up with a product that is widely praised in a magazine review but, "in reality," is crap and that something is a product heavily advertised in the magazine, you might have a case.
But you haven't done that, and I don't think it's possible.
OTOH, in the car mag business, the old Motor Trend seemed always to be awarding its "Car of the Year" award to some P-O-S car that was a big advertiser. But even MT appears to have realized that to be a short-sighted strategy as the magazine lost all credibility and, I would guess, readership. Because they seem to be upgrading the content a bit from what it used to be.
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