Hello everyone,

Earthlink has not been posting new messages from
most newsgroups since December 8, so I'm between
a rock and a hard place. I read the "new tea mag"
posts through google, but I'm responding through
my usenet client server, so I *hope* this comes
through. Mike, would you e-mail to let me
know.

I read most of the new mag, having received it
awhile back. I have many criticisms, most too
obvious to mention. Here are my major concerns:

Pictures are not properly captioned, even
where the pictures are as important as or
more important than the text.

In some articles, there is much gracious and
flowery language of tea praise, but at this
point a lack of substance. A person new to
Pu'erh would learn much, an old Pu'erh hand
far less.

The paucity of advertising is a mere function
of the mag's newness; if economically
successful, you will soon see the mag full of
ads. I hope quality and quantity of text is not
compromised.

I was miffed by the tone of the oolong 5
tea review article. My miffedness reflects
my feeling about the mag in general. The
article contained a great deal of unnecessary
text. (I do *not* refer here to Guang's article.
Get good copy editors, and let them have their
way with the text. While some articles are
well written, others are amateurish and
adolescent. Some are overlength. I will
*not* be more specific.

Overall impression: Nicely laid out, in
some cases well written and informative.
The future is probably bright. (BTW, kill
the cute text over picture stuff; it's
impossible to read.)

Here is my understanding of the genesis
of the first issue: It has gone through an
experimental introductory printing, a
copy of which I've got. It will go through
a second printing aimed at a broader
Asian market, and then a third aimed
at the Americas. Between each printing,
editing and redaction will take place. So,
I hope by the time the third printing comes
out, the typos, inappropriate word
choices, syntactic and factual mistakes
that might have crept in are snipped out.
I think objectivity and agressive editing
will make all the difference. Let's just see.

Michael