Chris are you sure we pay with our membership fee. The advertising more then likely pays the cost of production.
I don't remember exactly when the transition took place, but around 2004 at convention we approved the notion to bring our magazine "in house." We used to pay Swimming World roughly $8 per year per swimmer for Swim Magazine. The problem we had was Swim Magazine owned all of the content and we basically provided input, plus they received all advertising revenue; by bringing the magazine in house we would have full control over the magazine from cover to cover and receive the ad money. We were also told it would save the organization a ton of money because after a few years we could not only break even, but possibly even make money (because of advertising).
Since that time I haven't heard how that plan worked out (if we are saving money or not). Paying $8 per swimmer would be roughly $400k per year for 50k swimmers - so if the newsletter expenses are less than that, we are indeed doing better. It wouldn't be fair to add the Editor salary on top of the $400k when doing the comparison, because we did have a paid (part time) USMS Editor back then, too. You'd just have to handicap full time vs part time editor salaries to make a complete comparison.
Take all this with a grain of salt because I've never been involved with the magazine - I'm just echoing my faint memory about the magazine transition because it was hotly debated at the time.
Jeff
Chris are you sure we pay with our membership fee. The advertising more then likely pays the cost of production.
I don't remember exactly when the transition took place, but around 2004 at convention we approved the notion to bring our magazine "in house." We used to pay Swimming World roughly $8 per year per swimmer for Swim Magazine. The problem we had was Swim Magazine owned all of the content and we basically provided input, plus they received all advertising revenue; by bringing the magazine in house we would have full control over the magazine from cover to cover and receive the ad money. We were also told it would save the organization a ton of money because after a few years we could not only break even, but possibly even make money (because of advertising).
Since that time I haven't heard how that plan worked out (if we are saving money or not). Paying $8 per swimmer would be roughly $400k per year for 50k swimmers - so if the newsletter expenses are less than that, we are indeed doing better. It wouldn't be fair to add the Editor salary on top of the $400k when doing the comparison, because we did have a paid (part time) USMS Editor back then, too. You'd just have to handicap full time vs part time editor salaries to make a complete comparison.
Take all this with a grain of salt because I've never been involved with the magazine - I'm just echoing my faint memory about the magazine transition because it was hotly debated at the time.
Jeff
