I remember when Pro Basketball Today had to close, as well as One on One

Glory days...
*sigh*

Nooooooo!

I take the blame here. I purchased every issue of One on One, and they were forced to close. I purchased every issue of Handle, and they were forced to close.

Apologies.

They should feature Ben Cousin more often...reflects sad facts of this country.

Shame about Handle but agreed that HoopCity seem to be better at providing excuses for their work.

Was it part funded by the NBL or was it separate?

:-( Sad day for Basketball in this country. Got a subscription for Christmas only 1 issue in :-(

I'm devastated. I've been a subsrcriber from the start.

The magazine was awesome and a top read. Perfectly balanced and the diversity in there.

PBT was also sad as I reguarly had letters written in there including my famous quote about Tim Duncan "Walking Poo". I receive a bit of backlash from fellow readers. But it's all apart of the game.

Sad about the latest loss.

Still waiting for issue 2 from Hoop City.

kcgone - interesting idea. They could've traded advertising with the NBL. NBL provides advertising on their site and easy and regular access to players, while Handle have on-going info on the league schedule and results with a full-page ad every issue.

Shame. I really felt the loss when PBT stopped being made. In this internet age, a weekly newspaper was the best option, a month is too long in any sport.

Its why i don'y buy a lot of the b-ball mags on our shelves, half the time an article is on a player either since traded or perhaps injured...

It's sad whenever an aussie basketball mag taps the mat but I wouldn't have thought Handle will be missed by too many. Absolute rubbish magazine.

I too still have every issue of One On One ever made and I only missed about 3-4 issues of PBT's 10+ year existence (including an entire back page devoted to me as the Best Letter Eva!, Corness always was a dud) and used to get the odd issue of The Basketballer Magazine until the NBL wound that up.

Just a heads up that in this month's issue of Alpha Magazine there is a full page interview with Andrew Gaze (probably in part due to my letter of complaint a few months ago on the lack of NBL coverage) and despite being in the Ltd News stable I've always found it a decent read for $2.95. Supposedly it's also teetering on the edge of shutting up shop.

Hopefully when the big Fox deal goes through for the NBL, Uncle Rupert will see the wisdom in starting to promote the league although he's never been known for his business smarts.

Many publishers are stuck in a tough place - between something on the way out in a lot of cases in paper- and edition-based publications, and the expect-everything-for-free Internet. If a daily rarely breaks the news any more, then a monthly magazine has no better chance - they live or die on feature pieces and declining ad revenue I'd guess.

I'd like to see NBL clubs offer affiliate programs for season memberships (and game tickets if possible) - 5% of a $300 membership would be $15 and give incentives to zines and forums to aggressively co-promote the game. If 2,000 Handle readers (might be optimistic?) bought their memberships through that mechanism to read an online publication, they might have a $30k kickback to fund writers during the course of a year. They could pay $50 for a brief opinion piece, $150 for something a touch more substantial or $350+ for a feature - average them out and you could put together a zine with 3-4 pieces/week. Run premium memberships, donations and advertising on top of that and you might be able to sustain something reasonable?

(For one of my clients, I built a site that sells physical subscriptions, online subscriptions and then credits used to read individual articles - anyone interested is welcome to get in touch.)

Just thought I'd add to the business model talks that the hilarious Vice Magazine is free and operates purely on ad revenue as does one of our street press papers Rip It Up (as opposed to dB Magazine) which I do believe made the owner a multi-millionaire. She sold it to that Spanish guy here that owns the Adelaide Review.

So what happens to our subscriptions, do we get a refund or is bad luck?

Really sad to hear this, Handle was my favourite mag by far... :(

sorry mate but i'd assume its the latter..

every penny - not much money in basketball advertising. The publisher of Handle has lost a swag of money propping the magazine up for three years - credit to them for giving it a shot.

ahh, as far as I'm aware of, most writers are unpaid...(me been one of them)

I really didn't think there were any indication it was going to go; talked to the editor last Friday about a piece I sent in and to find out it's not on no more this week.

Probably didn't help that the owner/editor didn't pay a cent to his writers, lied about why payments weren't coming, and generally conducted himself like a snake.