Tris’ Blog

The BJA have announced that The World of Judo Magazine has ceased publication.

The BJA handle some of the logistics of the maagzine, such as subscriptions, and there is no official reason given on the magazine’s website itself.

However, Bob Willingham (Editor) did put the reasons in the final issue. Some choice quotes follow:

… since the start of Matside [BJA’s own magazine] I have not been volunteered a single news item from the BJA HQ. I actually feel it is a case of HQ ‘working to rule’ and waiting for me to run out of steam. I strongly feel that you are no longer going to get a quality judo magazine of international standard as the support for me is no longer there from the BJA…..despite my considerabke support for Densign White through TWOJ he has done nothing to support or promote the magazine in the last few years

The second major problem in publishing is that I am no longer the Official Photographer for the IJF.

The second quote was accompanied by a very snippy email snippet (”..I consider that our common work in the future is finished..”) from the President of the International Judo Federation.

This is a great shame. I had only just subscribed to the magazine so the final issue is the only one I have seen, but it had a lot of good content and fantastic pictures. I can see why subscriber numbers dropped (Why would BJA members pay extra for it when they get a freebie magazine with their membership?) and I had done just this for the first few years.

There is some further discussion on the BJA forums as well as on The Judo Forum.