Originally posted Oct 13 2006: I received this yesterday, and very welcome it was too. Rumours, but certainly not malicious ones had been circulating about the health of editor Fairclough at Hi-Fi News. As you can see below, he’s on the mend and I feel sure that like me, all of you reading this will wish him a speedy and complete recovery.
His comments regarding the editorial policy re music reviews are of particular interest to me and no doubt to many thousands of you out there too. On a personal level I have to say that I'm delighted that SF was prepared, despite the pain and distraction of his ill health to want to write to me like this and I am proud and delighted to give him the opportunity to present his view to my readership. I very much hope that this marks the beginning of a fruitful, cheerful and entertaining dialogue between us. So – a sincere ‘thank you’ Steve.
dear howard
apologies for not being in touch recently but i have been off work for almost two months now with health problems.
anyhow, i was interested to read your comments about the 'new look' hi-fi news as well as those regarding ken kessler. i have the utmost respect for ken kessler's professionalism as a journalist and i'm talking to him about contributing various articles to hi-fi news in the future.
regarding our music reviews section at this point in time we wanted to devote more pagination to hardware reviews rather than software reviews. i feel that as a hi-fi magazine more pages of hi-fi news should be devoted to discussing, reviewing and advising readers about hi-fi equipment (as demonstrated earlier this year when we cut back our home entertainment equipment coverage to concentrate more on hi-fi equipment). to be honest any decision was not taken due to commercial concerns regarding lack of record industry advertising in hi-fi news but to ensure more coverage of hi-fi equipment
i hope to be back at work in the very near future and perhaps then we can have our long awaited face-to-face meeting
best regards
steve fairclough
