>>I agree with everything you wrote. Eight years ago I could go to a local pet store or even a book store and find The Vivarium, Reptile Hobbyist, Reptile & Amphibian Magazine, Reptile & Amphibian Hobbyist, etc. - magazines that actually had articles that were worth reading. Reptiles bought out all the good magazines and is now the only one availible in the United States. The pages are flimsy, the articles often lack basic information or are even wrong all together and they now have sections such as "Herp Stuff" where they get to make more money by advertising more products in the form of an article. The Uroplatus article in the March issue was probably the first good article I've read from Reptiles in months.
If you're blaming Reptiles for the demise of The Vivarium, you'd be mistaken. It's my opinion that the hobby is not large enough to support at the most two magazines. Even the dog and cat hobbies only have a few non-specific breed magazines. The Vivarium failed because of financial difficulties, plain and simple. While I liked it and bought it when I could, the issue price was steep, and they could only manage to publish sporadically on a very inconsistant basis. You never knew when the next one would come out. Reptiles didn't kill The Vivarium, it simply failed to succeed and the name was bought out when there was nothing left.
As for the others, I don't remember if it was Reptile & Amphibian Magazine, or Reptile & Amphibian Hobbyist but one of them was commercial to an extent that puts Reptiles to shame. They'd have a huge, stiff, full color, 8-12 page bunch of ads for a particular company (I don't recall if it was ZooMed or T-rex, but it was one of them) every single month, plus other ads sprinkled throughout the magazine.
Most of Reptiles' articles are done on a freelance basis, very few are done in house. I haven't gotten my next issue yet, so I can't comment on the quality of the article. Perhaps someone here should have volunteered to write it instead.
