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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 3 (June 1, 1935)

What Do You Like?

What Do You Like?

This question is addressed to you, reader, and (lest you be in any doubt as to its meaning) we tell you right off that it refers to features of this Magazine and not to entrants for the Grand National.

The fact that tastes differ, naturally leads to an endless variety of efforts to cater for those tastes. Herein lies the spice of life. Yet in regard to any particular commodity, idea, presentation or production, there can usually be found a substantial majority for, or against it; and the successful caterer to the public taste—whether it be in hats or homes, meals or magazines—is he who can discover and supply just what that majority wants—at the time they want it.

Of course there are endless ways, also, by which tastes can be cultivated and dislikes turned to likes. This is usually a gradual process, however, and can best be done by a judicious admixture of the bitter with the sweet—a lot of what is liked and a little of what you would like them to like, that is, the sweet predominating. The first essential is to find your majority and gain their confidence. After that you are free to experiment along the margin which separates the known from the unknown—choosing always a route that leads towards the main objective.

These general principles are stated as a preliminary to an invitation to readers of this Magazine to send along their candid opinions of its contents.

What is there in it that you like, what do you dislike, to what are you indifferent, and what new features would you appreciate?

Increasing circulation amongst the general public is one indication that the popular taste is being met, but it is our desire to obtain, from correspondents, something of a plebiscite upon the general contents, with a view to still further improving the reader interest of the publication. We feel that nothing can assist better to this end than the expressed opinions of readers.

Of course, it must not be forgotten that the principal purpose of the journal is to create and maintain interest in the railways as the largest and most important industry under one control in the Dominion, and as the industry in which the greatest amount of national capital has been invested.

But closely associated with this objective is the New Zealand interest which the Magazine sets out to stimulate, and the love of country it aims to inspire, for accurate knowledge of New Zealand's favoured position and truly magnificent resources cannot fail to strengthen national patriotism.

When you send along your opinions, these will be closely examined and classified, and then an endeavour will be made to extend the features showing the greatest measure of popularity.

Much of the development of the Magazine up to the present has followed the line of expressed opinion by well-informed readers who have taken the trouble to write giving their views regarding various issues. You are invited to follow their lead and so take a hand in making the publication nearer to your heart's desire.

The present is a time when there appears to be an insatiable appetite for information on all kinds of topics. In fact, to be abreast of the times, one must follow the news rapidly, as progress is proceeding in almost every line of endeavour at very high speed. The romance of life nowadays lies rather in the achievements of experimenters, investigators, manufacturers and transporters than in the imagination of fiction-writers, whose plots can vary but little—the triangle love-story of earlier days has become a polygon, and the mystery story is driven for originality to a multiplicity of murders or suspects or both, but in both types the writers usually lag behind woefully in knowledge of practical things, and cause in the more sophisticated either a sense of irritation or a superior smile because of the gross errors made whenever a technical subject is involved.

So topical articles are displacing the short story in many successful magazines, and judged by increasing sales, popular taste has found the general scheme of short articles and paragraphs, sketches and half-tones in the “Railways Magazine” rather to its liking. And so now, once more, we ask, “What do you like?”