The recent news that Starlog was going online-only, at least for the moment, has naturally been commented upon pretty widely. After all, more than three decades worth of issues (and the spawning of a mini-magazine empire that included everything from baseball magazines to African-American women's magazines to car magazines and beyond) means a lot of people had contact with the title over the years.
NewsFromMe.com (which, if I'm reading that site correctly, is written by Mark Evanier) has what I think is a pretty solid insight into Starlog's longevity: "I was struck by generally smart, well-researched reporting that didn't pander. ... [T]here's a temptation to cater to the geeky element that such enterprises usually attract...to focus, as one of my friends once put it, on the Spock ears and not on the actor wearing them. Starlog sold to that crowd without, I'd like to think, insulting or losing those who like their journalism with a few more ounces of dignity. I always especially liked their habit of focusing on the so-called "little people" on a film or program..."
Starlog.com itself includes links to a number of folks commenting on the change. And though this is kind of the epitome of an internet feedback loop (because the Starlog.com article links to my previous post on this topic), I include it here because it also has a number of other folks, such as:
Lee Goldberg's A Writer's Life blog; and
Robert Greenberger's blog. Greenberger is a former editorial staffer of Starlog and its sister publications in the early 1980s, and he was founding editor of one of my favorites, Comics Scene (which was also the magazine that first snagged the talents of longtime Starlog editor David McDonnell, if I'm not losing my memory). Anyway, read his blog post to see his views of why Starlog is going print-less while British SF magazines colonize our newsstands. (You already know my views on the subject.)
Michael Alan Dorman chimes in.
Some comments on the bulletin board of the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon. You might have to scroll down to find where the Starlog part of the thread picks up or do a search.
The incredibly named Tombs of Kobol forum has a long line of reactions from former Starloggers.
And, finally, Starlog.com has this great video of a 1984 commercial for Starlog magazine. I've never seen the commercial, so it was a treat:
April 11, 2009, update: Tom Mason has written a very nice post about Starlog that's worth reading.
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