Wbatty

Hi, I'm ward Batty, co-editor and co-publisher of CSN. I just ran across this thread and figured I should clarify a couple of things. First, CSN is a sales tool for the comic shops. Our primary value is helping comic shops make their customers aware of what's happening, in particular with news of upcoming releases as well as updates concerning sell-outs, reprints, variant covers and so on. The paper must be successful in helping the retailers or I assume that over 700 comic shops would not carry it every week and we would not have sold over 100 million copies over the last 21 years.

Comics are a mass medium. Most people who are comics customers do not visit comics news sites. Nor do they attend comic book conventions. Also, many who are very active on the internet don't frequent comic shops. It takes two weeks from when we send the issue to the printer to when that issue appears in shops. Unlike other print publications, we do not force publishers to give us information in advance on an exclusive basis so it will still be news when the issue sees print.

For most people who read CSN, they are getting news that is important to them, directly related to the product in the shops in a timely manner. Our editorial focus is geared to this information and I believe we serve our readership well in that regard. I also can say we have helped literally hundreds of publishers over the years and harmed none.

We do share news (both ways, BTW) with Newsarama, but 90% of the material in CSN is original to CSN. 

I'm not going to debate the merits of the publication. I believe that we serve an important role for comic shops, allowing them to communicate a lot of useful information to their customers and add value to the comics buying experience for tens of thousands of customers every week. CSN serves the needs of comic shops and their customers, all of them, not just those who frequent internet comics sites. That's a subset of the overall market, and doesn't completely overlap as many who are active online are not regular comic shop customers. 

If you want to reach the most active comic readers who frequent the shops and buy the comics, there's no better way to do that than in CSN. That's why we succeeded in 1987 when every comics weekly other than The Buyer's Guide had failed and why we are successful now in the age of the internet.

FYI, I don't do any of the writing, I deal with the printer and advertisers and I'm the graphic designer (you try fitting in up to 10,000 words plus ads plus art into 8 pages. Almost all flashy design elements require space, the one thing I don't have).