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Duplication of articles within Autosport magazine, F1 Racing magazine and on Autosport.com


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#1 Imperial

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Posted 18 February 2013 - 11:00

I fully appreciate that some Autosport magazine articles are reprinted on Plus section of the website and as a magazine/website subscriber I don't really find myself having a problem with that, although I would prefer purely web-exclusive content on the website. Not a biggie though.

What I didn't like last week was reading an article in the Plus section of Autosport.com about the demise of British F3, only to find the article reprinted several days later in the magazine. It was a really great article but it lessened my enjoyment of 'Autosport Thursday' when I was forced to skip a few pages of the magazine because I'd read an article online already.

You may ask what the problem is, as I'd be reading the same article regardless. The problem is that I pay for a full magazine to read and I consider the website access to be a bonus, not the other way around. I am also an F1 Racing subscriber and find that the best articles from that magazine appear here as well, take the current article about Alain Prost's side of the Senna movie. I read that in F1 Racing a few weeks back. As most of the rest of F1 Racing is fluff and as a lot of Autosport is news, which I could pay to access via the website without needing the magazine, I am now asking myself why I am subscribing to both Autosport and F1 Racing magazines when the subscription from just one would pretty much cover full access to Autosport.com, where I can find essentially all of the articles from both that were worth bothering to reprint.

Any other thoughts on this?

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#2 SophieB

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Posted 18 February 2013 - 15:18

I would be very interested in the answer to this too as I'm in the same boat and had been wondering the same thing. Lately the only articles I found interesting in F1 Racing show up on Autosport Plus anyway, so yes, I've been wondering why I'm bothering still subscribing to F1 Racing any more.

#3 Grayson

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 11:13

This is something we've given a lot of thought to. We actually specifically asked about this in our last reader survey, towards the end of last year. The reaction from both AUTOSPORT+ subscribers and AUTOSPORT Magazine readers was overwhelmingly in favour of featuring magazine content on the website, and we have started publishing slightly more magazine content on the website in response.

One thing to remember is that the magazine content we are publishing on the site is in addition to the AUTOSPORT+ features rather than appearing there instead of those features. If we stopped reproducing those features then the magazine readers wouldn't be any better off, and the AUTOSPORT+ subscribers would lose those articles.

#4 SophieB

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 12:05

I don't think any of that explanation, interesting though it is, applies to the bit about F1 Racing magazine. Maybe I'm in the minority but without wishing to be unkind, I really am not exaggerating when I say the articles I see on Autosport Plus lately are literally the only pieces I really enjoyed in the original mag.

So from my point of view, though I'm not losing out by those articles being reprinted, as far as F1 Racing is concerned, I do feel I'm actually paying for the remaining, non-website content. Which, as I tend not to enjoy makes that a case of more fool me, I suppose so I'll probably just cancel F1 Racing and be done with it.

#5 Imperial

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 16:47

This is something we've given a lot of thought to. We actually specifically asked about this in our last reader survey, towards the end of last year. The reaction from both AUTOSPORT+ subscribers and AUTOSPORT Magazine readers was overwhelmingly in favour of featuring magazine content on the website, and we have started publishing slightly more magazine content on the website in response.

One thing to remember is that the magazine content we are publishing on the site is in addition to the AUTOSPORT+ features rather than appearing there instead of those features. If we stopped reproducing those features then the magazine readers wouldn't be any better off, and the AUTOSPORT+ subscribers would lose those articles.


Can you confirm that incidents such as the British F3 feature won't happen again? It genuinely spoiled my enjoyment of last weeks magazine. You wait for it arriving, only to find that one of the key features included in it has already been published on the site and you've read it.

The magazine should definitely take priority for publishing dates. I don't think the balance is right for reproducing F1 Racing features either. Those articles must appear something like two weeks after appearing in the magazine? Obviously six months later the article may no longer be relevant, but to publish within the sales-cycle for a particular issue (as with the current Prost article) is a bit offensive to F1 Racing subscribers, as evidenced by Sophie's response.