Talk:Black Belt (magazine)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality

This entry clearly contains unsubstantiated opinions of the author: "now it's a business and a crooked one at that. It covers mostly those who pay enough to warrant articles plugging their commercial schools or videos" Sleepwalkcapsule (talk) 22:25, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

you are right that this needs secondary references. But you can't leave in the good things and take out the bad, that would be non-neutral. As it stands, we seem to have no secondary reference whatsoever. It seems to be the case that the magazine used to be good during the early years, and has become worthless later. But such a judgement needs to be based on an independent source. --dab (𒁳) 10:55, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It would be nice to find out more about this. The magazine is currently owned by Active Interest Media, a company formed in 2003. This seems to be your standard "evil business", buying up magazines by the dozen to turn them into cash cows. But Black Belt must have been struggling during the 1980s and 1990s before finally ending up where it is today. Until when was it published by Uyehara? What happened then? It appears that quality dropped considerably after the "early years", and the 1980s editions are full of dubious content just aimed at the armchair "Ninja enthusiast" rather than at martial artists themselves. The magazine presumably tried to cash in on the "Ninja boom" of the 1980s and sort of crash landed after that before being bought up by AIM. --dab (𒁳) 11:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

history

So I did some research, and this is the story as it presents itself from the magazine's publishing information: Uyehara acted as editor 1961 to 1973. In 1974, he retired as active editor, but he remained in California and acted as president of "Rainbow Publishing". In 1980 or so he moved to Hawaii but continued acting as a "consultant" until 1988. Presumably he either died or retired for good in 1988 or 1989. The magazine's history could be argued to have had four phases,

• the "early days" of 1961 to 1973 under direct editorship of Uyehara
• 1974 to 1988 under continued but gradually decreasing supervision of Uyehara
• 1989 to 1997/8, as an independently run enterprise under long-term editor Jim Coleman
• 1998/9 to present, as a "niche enthusiast" publication run by large publishers specialized on this market (but not on martial arts in particular), first under Sabot and since 2003 under AIM, edited by Robert Young

The four phases very much reflect the history of martial arts in general: In the "early days", it looks much like a "zine", produced for a tiny group of enthusiasts. The transitional period of the early 1980s sees a transition of martial arts to a pop culture item with a lot of Ninjas, Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Coleman period (1990s) sees the rise of hybrid martial arts and MMA. So martial arts as perceived by the mainstream moves away from "Ninja" bullshido and becomes a spectator sport. The last period, 1999 to present, might represent the final decline of the publication form of "magazine" altogether, as there is nothing they could publish that enthusiasts could not read up on in infinitely greater detail on the internet, so the magazines are "saved" by large corporations who turn them into advertisement vehicles. --dab (𒁳) 12:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• it appears that Uyehara is still alive,presumably in his 80s now, he just retired from BB altogether around 1989. His "Rainbow Publications" also still seems to exist, as "Rainbow Entertainment Inc." --dab (𒁳) 13:02, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I worked at Black Belt from 1991-1992 (David Clary, assistant editor at Black Belt, editor of Karate/Kung Fu Illustrated) and met Mito twice when he'd come to visit. He had a guiding hand in the magazine in that both Michael (magazine publisher) and Geri (books publisher) spoke to him regularly and invoked his name when hard choices needed making. As well, it was his friendships with the old guard (Wallace, Norris, etc.) that kept them interacting with us, I think. He had at least a strong indirect hand on the magazine until they sold it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.102.64.133 (talk) 16:44, 3 September 2014 (UTC)