Many, many years ago, I had subscriptions to Keyboard and Sheet Music magazines. After a couple years, I decided neither one was worth the price and dropped them both. At the time, I was a full-time freelance writer, and I, personally, thought the articles in both were very poorly written and quite biased. Keyboard, like many similar publications, only reviewed keyboards that were also advertisers, and for some strange reason, they never seemed to have a negative review - not a single one that I could recall. Same was true for some of the boating magazines I subscribed to - all the boats were just amazing.

Now, I really do not enjoy reading online articles. Most of them are also biased and poorly written, and for the same reasons - they pay scale for online writers is lousy, and because of this they tend to get lousy writers. I just finished reading Alfred Lansing's "Endurance - Shackleton's Incredible Voyage," an absolutely incredible book that was very difficult to put down. For those of you who are not familiar with Sir Ernest Shackleton, he made a daring voyage to the Antarctic in 1915, a voyage that had it not been for a host of unanticipated weather conditions, would have been one of the most incredible explorations of the south pole in history. This book was the product of an enormous amount of research, and impeccable writing skill on the part of Alfred Lansing.

In contrast, most of the articles in Keyboard Magazine, and similar publications, both print media and online, tend to not be well researched, they're often merely the opinion of the writer and as such, tend to be somewhat biased. Maybe I'm just being a bit picky, or cantankerous, but what the Hell, I'm an old fart and we're supposed to have some leeway in these things.

While it's sad to see any publication cease production, I suspect it is the way of the future. Younger people do not read newspapers, magazines, and for the most part, they tend not to read printed information on the Internet. Consequently, the younger generation seems to migrate more toward TV News, You Tube, etc... I may be wrong, but I believe that a few years from now, children will no longer be taught how to read cursive, and from what my grandson tells me, they no longer teach cursive writing in school.

So, bid a fond farewell to Keyboard, and all the other print media. Pretty soon, no one will even remember their names. Hmmmm! Kinda like us, I guess.

All the best,

Gary