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Post by DogsDinner on Jul 26, 2015 11:53:56 GMT
What is with the Horse and Hound...?
I bought this week's issue especially for the report on the North of England In-Hand and M&M Show report, - editors please note that the clue is in the name of the show!!! - and there is NOT ONE photo of an M&M pony, not one, not the Torne Valley Supreme, not the HOYS qualifier champion, not the M&M mini champion, none. But there are three, yes that's 1, 2, 3, from veteran/SSADL classes. No disrespect at all to the latter and it is great to see these older ponies gracing the pages of what used to be the weekly bible, but come on please reporters... the North of England series has a horse show, a pony show, and the In-Hand and M&M show, so surely there should be some good representation of M&M ponies in the report from this show.
That's the final straw for me with this magazine. I used to buy it for all the show results, but these are no longer published, although I note that dressage results are still published. Editorial content seems to have given way to full-page photos, which obviously fill up more space for less cost and devalue the magazine for the reader.
Does anyone actually like the new format?
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Post by fanfarefan on Jul 26, 2015 12:30:14 GMT
i stopped buying it years ago , all seemed to be SJ, racing , and dressage , thats not to say they cant be reported on , but is by no means a fair spread of equine competition reports
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Post by fatcob on Jul 26, 2015 12:31:51 GMT
Really gone down hill ... Also decided that this weeks copy was also my last after forty years!
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hla710
Junior Member
Posts: 198
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Post by hla710 on Jul 26, 2015 12:56:57 GMT
The M&M champions from both the Royal Highland and Great Yorkshire weren't featured either, not even a mention, when these classes have possibly the largest entries at both shows. Very disappointing.
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Post by Goneaway. on Jul 26, 2015 13:13:06 GMT
As a child I bought it with my pocket money, kept them all, now in the loft, as soon as I had a bank account I subscribed, just loved to wait for the postman deliver on a Thursday..and devour the racing and showing pages, looked at the for sale adds dreaming of what I might buy...but sadly have now Cx my subscription it's just not worth it anymore. The reporting is hopeless but it has in my opinion been poor for maybe the last six or seven years.. Am now a happy subscriber of The Showing Journel.....
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Post by viking on Jul 26, 2015 13:19:28 GMT
Used to look forward to it, but gave up years ago as there was little native showing news, photographs or results. Expensive magazine for pages that were/are of limited or no interest.
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Post by crimsoncloverep on Jul 26, 2015 13:44:31 GMT
I feel its getting boring- no published showing results, poor show coverage with just the same few producers popping up,and poor spread of information from different sections of the show. Real shame as its the only magazine that really follows showing
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Post by muggley on Jul 26, 2015 13:50:23 GMT
Taken from the H&H Forum's regarding Show Results:
Forum Member:
For what it is worth, I hav a query. Why do you publish results lists in all sections EXCEPT showing - th reports are very good but cannot possibly mention everybody placed. I like to see who got placed as well as the winners of main classes.
H&H Response:
thanks for asking about that. We have stopped publishing showing results because we cannot trust that the information supplied to us by shows to be accurate. Every week without fail we would have readers calling in to complain about inaccuracies in the showing results. As there is no central place where we can check these results, we have decided that it is better to not run the results, than risk publishing results that are wrong. We appreciate that this is a source of frustation for the showing community and we hope that the launch of our new event entry and results service, Equo, later in the year will provide us with more accurate results that we will feel confident about publishing. I hope that helps explain the reasoning behind the decision.
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Post by the showing register on Jul 26, 2015 13:57:34 GMT
At TSR we are really hoping for a headline for our summer gala that is not a professional producer as we had so many amateur riders and several qualified for HOYS plus we had our Master Class all Amateurs but I have to say we are not holding our breath ! You would think they would want to grow their readership and the Amateur contingent far outweigh the professionals.
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Post by pipandflo on Jul 26, 2015 14:01:00 GMT
I stopped buying when they downgraded the information on subjects to novice standard, I used to love the detailed vet articles but found it became to chatty and shallow. Then the showing reports just seemed to mention producers and the results stopped and so did I buying it.
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Post by Welshcob92 on Jul 26, 2015 14:09:52 GMT
Having taking the time to write a report for the H&H when my mare went champion HOYS M&M at the great Yorkshire, and told we would be in it, it's very frustrating to see not even a mention over 4 whole pages of the show report!! My mare also won the HOYS D qualifier at North of England, four days prior to winning the Yorkshire, and no mention there nether
Also, they asked for a write up for the three counties M&M HOYS champion, and yet again nothing in the magazine.
Much prefer showing world and the showing journal, where there have write ups and photos of different horses every month, and they aren't biased to certain people!
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Post by gillwales on Jul 26, 2015 14:40:04 GMT
I stopped buying it years ago when Michale clayton stopped being the Editor. After then it became more of a "womans magazine" with childish articles. It has stopped being a must have... very sad
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Post by willyymint on Jul 26, 2015 14:52:57 GMT
the magazine went to the dogs years ago. At one time it was the only magazine for showing results. As previously stated its mainly a few household names that are consistently mentioned and photographed. Their reporting on M&Ms is dire at best and yet these classes are consistently the largest at most shows but the reporting of these classes is given over to a couple of paragraphs . The Olmpia reporting for the past 5 years ihas been pathetic given that showing virtually goes in to hibernation at this time of year you would have thought there would have been a significant number of pages reports and photographs but again just a foot note!
Do yourselves a favour subscribe to one of the other dedicated magazines or donate your subscription money to an animal shelter. As for writing in don't bother you'll only get a condescending and cursory response.
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lovebird
Full Member
SandbankEarlybird & Freya, Evening Performance HOYS 2013
Posts: 348
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Post by lovebird on Jul 26, 2015 15:07:12 GMT
Haven't bought it for years, for all the same reasons.
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Post by chloesmum on Jul 26, 2015 15:25:38 GMT
Yes!! Subscription Used to be part of my Christmas present every year but this year I said please don't bother. I used to write show reports until a couple of years ago and always tried to feature new people/ first wins etc. However don't feel it is the reporters fault, they get given so little word coverage for shows and get their reports cut, so difficult to write a balanced report with so many classes. They have also cut the amount of shows they cover - so sign of the times I guess. I do feel that the magazine is not really interested in showing, maybe that is also the general reading public hence the rise of Showing World. Also re results with the power of the internet most are known well before show reports go to print - HG being a great source of information!
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Post by honeypot on Jul 26, 2015 15:44:10 GMT
As a child I bought it with my pocket money, kept them all, now in the loft, as soon as I had a bank account I subscribed, just loved to wait for the postman deliver on a Thursday..and devour the racing and showing pages, looked at the for sale adds dreaming of what I might buy...but sadly have now Cx my subscription it's just not worth it anymore. The reporting is hopeless but it has in my opinion been poor for maybe the last six or seven years.. Am now a happy subscriber of The Showing Journel..... This was me. I stopped taking it when I friend crewed at an event when the winner cheated, very obviously and nothing was mentioned in the H&H report, and they also did not report on Equifest because they did not have HOYS or Olympia qualifiers. Lazy journalism and because the same people are in it every week in one form or another, just look at the interviews, there must be a lot of back scratching. The question is, who actually buys it?
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Post by h&h on Jul 26, 2015 16:07:39 GMT
I do still like parts of it, I like the detailed interviews with people from the horse world like this week Edward Gal, and the yard visits. But then I am interested in dressage and sj etc as well as showing. Only the hunting and racing that I never read.
But the showing is lazy reporting, its so much easier to just ring Robert walker and Jane ross and fill the pages with them.
Whenever they need to put in a token showing feature it is always Jane ross yard they use, near to London I guess!
I'm not a fan of showing world and the show ring. The subscription one started off good with lots of interviews and things about the top guys in showing, but now its Hal filled with just pictures from shows, often wrongly identified! Boring! And very southern based, again easy reporting for the writer.
Nterstingly I found a 2011 copy of h&h today, it must be 3 times thicker than this weeks. Better quality paper, its the one from when Valegro did his first Europeans, he was 6th and only 3rd best Brit! And that's why I keep them all, lovely to look back!
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Post by oldschooler on Jul 26, 2015 16:18:26 GMT
What is with the Horse and Hound...? I bought this week's issue especially for the report on the North of England In-Hand and M&M Show report, - editors please note that the clue is in the name of the show!!! - and there is NOT ONE photo of an M&M pony, not one, not the Torne Valley Supreme, not the HOYS qualifier champion, not the M&M mini champion, none. But there are three, yes that's 1, 2, 3, from veteran/SSADL classes. No disrespect at all to the latter and it is great to see these older ponies gracing the pages of what used to be the weekly bible, but come on please reporters... the North of England series has a horse show, a pony show, and the In-Hand and M&M show, so surely there should be some good representation of M&M ponies in the report from this show. That's the final straw for me with this magazine. I used to buy it for all the show results, but these are no longer published, although I note that dressage results are still published. Editorial content seems to have given way to full-page photos, which obviously fill up more space for less cost and devalue the magazine for the reader. Does anyone actually like the new format? Absolutely agree. Have been buying nag and dog for over 40 years, and have a subscription, but will probably stop it soon. If you are not into dressage, racing or hunting it is a dead loss. The Show edition is such a disappointment, this used to be over a few weeks, there were two at least - three possibly - my memory is not as good as it used to be. Each of these were so thick with pages and pages of stallion adverts from the show pony studs as well as TB studs. What has happened to the list of HOYS qualifiers? This has disappeared. I used to look each week searching for any pony I had bred in the show results, always such a pleasure. I suppose it reflects the economic climate. Sad.
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Post by littlebriars on Jul 26, 2015 17:42:47 GMT
The nag has been shot and the dog as done a runner !!! Not a patch on what it used to be - whats happened to the horse / pony classified ads - 2 / 3 pages max .... I am another who will be cancelling my subscription ....... Another thumbs DOWN for the new format .......
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Post by Guestless on Jul 26, 2015 17:45:07 GMT
I cancelled my subscription about 5 years ago now when the number of showing reports was drastically reduced. I used to find it boring during most of the winter anyway but didn't mind as the summer editions made up for it. It would be interesting to know their circulation figures now compared to several years ago - I suspect they have lost a LOT of readers....but they don't seem to be trying to get us back
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Post by pipandwill on Jul 26, 2015 18:03:42 GMT
We still have it in subscription, but I hate the new format, no showing results featured ever. I was appauled this week that the late Dawn Wofford, who representing Uk internationally as a showjumper, was a reserve for the olympic games and has been an unbelievable supporter of the pony club, and a DC for the west warwicks pony club, and all she got was a tiny box this week, as she passed away a week ago. I look forward to reading the tsr report, but im sure it will all be about the producers, my pony went Ridden pony champion on sunday and I highly doubt we will even get a line... We wont be renewing our subscription next year, the new format looks so cheap
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Post by bluegrass on Jul 27, 2015 7:04:18 GMT
Another person who has been taking it for 40 or so years even when money was very tight, it was my treat to myself. Now, I really am going to stop. They managed to turn the Eventing magazine into a gossip rag and killed it off, and they are doing the same to H&H. I still enjoy the articles by Carl Hester and Graham Fletcher, informative and constructive, but that's it.
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Post by Horsey Magazines on Jul 27, 2015 7:13:45 GMT
I stopped getting H&H a while ago. To many adverts and reporters that are too busy sucking up to professionals and producers. Producers ring their friends (reporters) after shows or collar them at shows to ensure they get their coverage. Those heading classes but not a recogniseable name are lucky to get a mention. I bought the showing journal for a while but cancelled my subscription to that as it also became a forum to worship producers through. I cannot stand some of the features in that, eg that silly etiquette page and the ridiculous self appreciating Dawsons Creek style cob daddy rubbish, that had nothing or very little to do with showing and seemed to be one mans ode to himself, thesaurus on standby.
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Post by BuZzfood on Jul 27, 2015 7:32:07 GMT
What is with the awful BuzzFeed / Cosmopolitan style things they do online now? '16 things riders aren't supposed to do but do anyway' and similar 'articles'. Anyone else find these incredibly irritating?
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Post by fatcob on Jul 27, 2015 7:57:37 GMT
The death toll rang out for many magazines once the internet was born, H&H had a unique opportunity though as it is read by many offline never online people, but when they missed their chance with the classifieds and allowed the likes of HQ to takeover that market ... it was only a matter of time.
They should have created a similar format to HQ ( which I think is a great business) with an offline ( magazine) backed up by the same ad in H&H. They had a head start as they were well funded already had a following and had the banner / headline advertisers, but no they blew it, lost the revenue, so now the magazine suffers and readers are ebbing away.
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smalley
Full Member
Horses lend us the wings we lack
Posts: 419
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Post by smalley on Jul 27, 2015 8:03:49 GMT
I agree on the new format, I find it really hard to read and get into the articles. Another thing that has really bugged me this year though is in the Riding Clubs section - not relevant to a lot of people and I know it's not exactly the olympics, but this year our riding club junior team has won TWO national titles, one of which had a brilliant story behind it as we were a team of 3 and we were a real 'scratch team' but we still came home with the title. Yet H&H seem to have forgotten BRC competitions have 2 days, and since the seniors are always on the 1st day there a plenty of pictures and reports about the seniors and maybe one line saying who won in the juniors. I think I'm right in saying there hasn't been a single junior picture this year, which is so unfair as so many riders won't get a chance to be in otherwise.
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Post by pipandwill on Jul 27, 2015 8:53:25 GMT
I agree on the new format, I find it really hard to read and get into the articles. Another thing that has really bugged me this year though is in the Riding Clubs section - not relevant to a lot of people and I know it's not exactly the olympics, but this year our riding club junior team has won TWO national titles, one of which had a brilliant story behind it as we were a team of 3 and we were a real 'scratch team' but we still came home with the title. Yet H&H seem to have forgotten BRC competitions have 2 days, and since the seniors are always on the 1st day there a plenty of pictures and reports about the seniors and maybe one line saying who won in the juniors. I think I'm right in saying there hasn't been a single junior picture this year, which is so unfair as so many riders won't get a chance to be in otherwise. Yes, couod not agree more. The junior team for our riding club won the intermediate sj at the national champs last year. We had one sentence... No picture. This year, we won the 100 eventer challenge at the brc festival of the horse, again we managed a paragraph. Not like it was any biggy that the team had not only won the team comp, but also gone 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th individually! It will be a miracle when a junior team gets a picture in h&h!!
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Post by ambassador on Jul 27, 2015 9:12:56 GMT
I used to buy it religiously every week but stopped a few years back. Its so thin now I can browse it in five minutes in Asda when I do the weekly shop!
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Post by bellasmum on Jul 27, 2015 9:54:32 GMT
Taken from the H&H Forum's regarding Show Results: Forum Member: For what it is worth, I hav a query. Why do you publish results lists in all sections EXCEPT showing - th reports are very good but cannot possibly mention everybody placed. I like to see who got placed as well as the winners of main classes. H&H Response: thanks for asking about that. We have stopped publishing showing results because we cannot trust that the information supplied to us by shows to be accurate. Every week without fail we would have readers calling in to complain about inaccuracies in the showing results. As there is no central place where we can check these results, we have decided that it is better to not run the results, than risk publishing results that are wrong. We appreciate that this is a source of frustation for the showing community and we hope that the launch of our new event entry and results service, Equo, later in the year will provide us with more accurate results that we will feel confident about publishing. I hope that helps explain the reasoning behind the decision.
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Post by bellasmum on Jul 27, 2015 10:06:54 GMT
Wouldn't this make sense to the change of it all – I think they know the new format has gone down like a fart in a lift!!!
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