Aside from being a beautiful engine, the interesting thing about the cover photo of the June 2009 issue of Gas Engine Magazine is that you, the reader, chose it.

The cover of the June 2009 issue of Gas Engine Magazine.

Tom Winkler’s 1904 6 HP C.P. & J. Lauson was one of four cover images we had to choose from, and to help us decide which one to go with, we surveyed more than 2,900 GEM subscribers by e-mail in late April. We also asked them to rank their interest in several articles based on headlines and brief descriptions, and you’ll find many of those articles in this issue.

Many subscribers took advantage of the opportunity to share their thoughts on GEM through the open comment portion of the survey. Most of the comments were very helpful, and some of you asked a question that I’d like to answer here. That question was, why are we surveying our readers? Shouldn’t we know what to put in the magazine without asking?

Considering the content in GEM depends on reader submissions, we think it just makes sense to ask the readers for their opinion on other aspects of the magazine. Surveying also helps you contribute to the magazine if you don’t have time to submit an article.

Lately, each issue has had more content planned for it than we have pages to fill, which has provided a perfect opportunity for us to get the reader involved in the process of making the magazine. And while it doesn’t happen too often, we found ourselves with four very strong cover images for this issue, again providing the reader with the unique opportunity to "build-your-own" magazine.

At this point, I should note that if you chose some of the articles that you don’t see in this issue, don’t worry – we’re planning on running them in future issues of GEM. We just thought that since we had such a strong set of options for this issue that we’d give you a chance to weigh in.

As I’ve already stated, we sent out the survey by e-mail to more than 2,900 subscribers but we’d love to send it out to thousands more. If you have an e-mail address and you’d like to participate in our next reader survey, just send a message to my e-mail and I’ll add you to the list. That will also give you the opportunity to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which will show up in your e-mail every Tuesday.

Thanks to everyone who participated this time around!

In the February 2009 issue of GEM, we ran an article titled “Using their Heads” submitted by Ben Romich. It was a short piece about how Ben and his neighbor, Elmer Sherwin, restored an old headless Fairbanks-Morse and made some creative modifications along the way.

Elmer Sherwin, who helped Ben Romich restore the Fairbanks-Morse engine featured in the February 2009 issue of GEM.

In the process of editing that story, we inadvertently changed the meaning of a few of Ben’s sentences, and cut a few more for length. At the time, we were trying to fit the story and photos on one page and save what we thought were the important details. Instead, we ended up omitting details that Ben found important, such as the few lines giving public credit to Don Irvin for giving him the gas engine “bug.” Needless to say, Ben was disappointed and embarrassed when he read his article in the magazine. And most of the time, the story ends there without us knowing we made a mistake.

But thankfully, Ben sent us a letter expressing his disappointment and asked us to take his letter as constructive criticism. He pointed out our editing mistakes and suggested that we include a guide to contributors for readers to consult before submitting articles. This is a great idea that we’re going to work on and implement in the next couple issues.

Ben’s letter also motivated all of us here at GEM to reevaluate our approach to editing your articles. As editors and writers ourselves, there’s a delicate balance required when you read someone else’s work. Any edits we make to an story are solely intended to help make the article understood by all of our readers. The truth, though, is everyone has a unique voice when they write and sometimes, we don’t realize that we’re making changes to articles simply because we prefer different words or phrasing. It’s never intentional or malicious, but it does happen.

I also mentioned in the February issue that we’re encouraging all submissions large and small and your response to that request has been outstanding – keep ’em coming! You’ll notice in this issue that five of the stories are reader submitted and we’ve got a growing list of stories ready to run in future issues. And with Ben in mind, please know that if you submit an article and we need to make significant changes, we’ll be consulting you first, so please make sure to include your e-mail  address or phone number with your submission. 

Finally, we apologize for our mistake, Ben. Happy 89th birthday, and thanks for helping us make GEM the best it can be.