Brief History of the Skeptic

by Barry Williams

And they Said it Would Never Last
A brief history (so far) of the Skeptic

In January 1981 a new phenomenon burst upon the publishing scene. It was manifested in a four page, tabloid format newspaper, titled the Skeptic and it contained articles headed "Skeptics Test Psychic Surgeon", "Doris Stokes Wrong - Police" and "Alien Honeycomb Tested", among others. This issue was followed in August 1981 by No 2, in a new 16 page A4 format, and in November by No 3, also of 16 pages. Thus, in its first year of publication, the Skeptic comprised only three issues.

From January 1982, the Skeptic became a quarterly magazine and has remained so ever since, with the number of pages gradually increasing to 20, 24, 32, 40, 60 pages, until the present, when it regularly reaches 72 pages, and occasionally 76.

Issues v1 (1) - v3 (1) were edited by Mark Plummer, then President of Australian Skeptics, with word processing carried out by Secretary, James Gerrand. From v3 (2) the editorship passed to Janet de Silva, who carried the load until v5 (1), when it was taken on by Anne Tuohy. Anne remained in the chair until v6 (4) when Tim Mendham took over and moved publication from Melbourne to Sydney and started using a computer for production. Tim continued until v10 (1) (March 1990) when pressure of work forced him to relinquish the post. Barry Williams then became editor "for one issue only" and he remains in that position today, since January 1997 as full time editor. Harry Edwards has been an invaluable contributing editor during the latter two terms.

Initially, the magazine relied very much on in-house contributions and reprints of sceptical items from overseas magazines, but it was always our intention that it should reflect the Australian Skeptical scene and this has largely been achieved.

Our breadth of focus has also shifted with our growth and the Skeptic now publishes articles on a far wider range of topics than it did in the early days - there are just so many things one can say about the fatuity of astrology, without the danger of repetition. We have also tapped a far wider and more expert group of contributors, resulting in articles of substance from many people who are leaders in their respective fields. But, while doing this, we have not lost our sense of humour, nor forgotten that the bulk of our readership consists of Australians without any particular expertise in the areas we cover. We have tried to keep the Skeptic both informative and entertaining, and the feedback we get indicates we have had some success.

As with our size, so with our readership, and where the first issue went to fewer than 200 subscribers, we now mail almost 3,000 copies to subscribers in Australia and overseas.

We are rather proud of the fact that the Skeptic is now one of the three largest Skeptics magazines in the world and we intend to keep on improving.