Editing Computer magazine (section)

===1980s ===

In the 1980s, computer magazines skewed their content towards the [[hobbyist]] end of the then-[[microcomputer]] market, and used to contain [[type-in program]]s, but these have gone out of fashion. The first magazine devoted to this class of computers was ''[[Creative Computing]]''. ''[[Byte (magazine)|Byte]]'' was an influential technical journal that published until the 1990s.

In 1983, an average of one new computer magazine appeared each week.<ref name="berg19840908">{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/08/business/the-computer-magazine-glut.html |title=The Computer Magazine Glut |last=Berg |first=Eric N. |date=8 September 1984 |work=The New York Times |access-date=3 July 2017 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> By late that year more than 200 existed. Their numbers and size grew rapidly with the industry they covered, and ''BYTE'' and ''[[80 Micro]]'' were among the three thickest magazines of any kind per issue.<ref name="nyt19831109">{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/09/business/boom-in-computer-magazines.html | title=Boom in Computer Magazines | access-date=25 February 2011 | date=9 November 1983 | work=The New York Times }}</ref> ''[[Compute!]]''{{'}}s editor in chief reported in the December 1983 issue that "all of our previous records are being broken: largest number of pages, largest-number of four-color advertising pages, largest number of printing pages, and the largest number of editorial pages".<ref name="lock198312">{{Cite magazine |last=Lock |first=Robert |date=December 1983 |title=Editor's Notes |url=https://archive.org/stream/1983-12-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_043_1983_Dec#page/n7/mode/2up |magazine=Compute! |page=6}}</ref>

Computers were the only industry with product-specific magazines, like ''80 Micro'', ''[[PC Magazine]]'', and ''[[Macworld]]''; their editors vowed to impartially cover their computers whether or not doing so hurt their readers' and advertisers' market, while claiming that their rivals pandered to advertisers by only publishing positive news.<ref name="bartimo19841210">{{cite news | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=si4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA35 | title=Magazines Woo Users | access-date=14 March 2011 | author=Bartimo, Jim | date=10 December 1984 | pages=35–36 | work=InfoWorld}}</ref> 

''BYTE,'' in March 1984, apologized for publishing articles by authors with promotional material for companies without describing them as such, and in April suggested that other magazines adopt its rules of conduct for writers, such as prohibiting employees from accepting gifts or discounts. 

''[[InfoWorld]]'' stated in June that many of the "150 or so" industry magazines published articles without clearly identifying authors' [[Affiliate marketing|affiliations]] and [[conflicts of interest]].

Around 1985, many magazines ended. However, as their number exceeded the amount of available advertising revenue despite revenue in the first half of the year five times that of the same period in 1982. Consumers typically bought computer magazines more for advertising than articles, which benefited already leading journals like ''BYTE'' and ''PC Magazine'' and hurt weaker ones. Also affecting magazines was the computer industry's economic difficulties, including the [[video game crash of 1983]], which badly hurt the home-computer market. 

[[Dan Gutman]], the founder of ''Computer Games'', recalled in 1987 that "the computer games industry crashed and burned like a bad night of ''[[Microsoft Flight Simulator|Flight Simulator]]''—with my magazine on the runway". ''[[Antic (magazine)|Antic]]''<nowiki/>'s advertising sales declined by 50% in 90 days, ''Compute!''<nowiki/>'s number of pages declined from 392 in December 1983 to 160 ten months later, and ''Compute!'' and ''[[Compute!'s Gazette]]''<nowiki/>'s publisher assured readers in an editorial that his company "is and continues to be quite successful ... even during these particularly difficult times in the industry". ''[[Computer Gaming World]]'' stated in 1988 that it was the only one of the 18 color magazines that covered computer games in 1983 to survive the crash. ''Compute!'' similarly stated that year that it was the only general-interest survivor of about 150 consumer-computing magazines published in 1983.

Some computer magazines in the 1980s and 1990s were issued only on disk (or cassette tape, or CD-ROM) with no printed counterpart; such publications are collectively (though somewhat inaccurately) known as ''[[disk magazine]]s'' and are [[List of disk magazines|listed separately]].