“…the most common request regarded…better quality in style and editing…” The Importance of being important We asked people what they consider to be Very Important, Important, or Not Important. Their choices included both features and qualities, thus both objective (something exists) and subjective (something is good) characteristics to consider. When asked only what is Very Important, Accuracy of Information was top of the chart with fully 88% giving that opinion. In a distant second place, Technical Articles garnered slightly fewer than half the votes for Very Important. Moving down the list, Range of topics ranked as Very Important to 42% of respondents, with Mission specific coverage and Quality of photography each at about 29%. Personality/insight of writing, Geographic coverage and Frequency of publication work down from 27% to 23% to 16.5%, respectively. Regarding what people consider to be Very Important, it was Layout and design that had the least favor. However, ranking these same factors as Important, Layout and design scores third highest, with 49.3%. What two factors bested it for importance? Frequency of publication showed up second at 50.5% and Quality of photography snapped up first place with 51.1%. At first, the last-place finisher might seem counter-intuitive: Accuracy of information was chosen by only 8%. Of course, upon reflection the low “score” is because such a preponderance of respondents consider it Very Important. An interesting extraction of the data shows that, when the values for Very Important and Important are combined and ranked, the relative order of all the factors remain as they were for Very Important with only one pair of factors switching places: Quality of photography moves up to 4th position while Mission-specific coverage slips to 5th. Still, they rate within two percentage points of each other, just below 80%. Reviewing the open-ended responses, the most common request tp 4 regarded the writing, with calls for better quality in style and editing standing out, as well as a desire for more editorial honesty. The second most requested factor was timeliness — “stale news is no news.” A common theme was also the topic of military versus commercial coverage, but both combinations were requested: more of one and less of the other. More articles about operations and people were also requested. Accuracy, then, rated highest and, judging from the additional responses, this extends beyond mechanical facts to the craft of writing. Technical articles and a wide range of topics are also highly valued, with each of these three top factors rating higher than 90%. In the middle rankings, photography, mission-specific coverage, and the personality of the writing rate between 75% and 80%. Geographic coverage, Frequency of publication, and Layout and design fill out the bottom third, though still valued by twothirds of respondents (68.3%, 67.0% and 65.1% respectively). tp 2 tp 1 Read, Skim, Skip, Huh? Respondents were asked to characterize the level with which they inter- Please rate the importance of these factors in a rotorcraft-specific magazine. (Results shown are combined Very Important and Important.) Accuracy of information Technical articles Range of topics Quality of photography Mission-specific coverage Personality/insight of writing Geographic coverage Frequency of publication Layout and design 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 2 20091014 bdnaerospace.com previous page next page