Inoue, Dinopress and the future.

[Luis Rey <luisrey@ndirect.co.uk>]

After the sad demise of Maasaki Inoue I think it is time for all paleo
aficionados in the world to take example, learn and maybe do something
to honour his memory. Notwithstanding an economic crisis  Mr. Inoue was
enthusiastic enough to organize and push forward a series of high
quality, extremely interesting and informative magazines. Not only that,
he managed to do it paying and commissioning new artwork or new
articles. His only criteria for commissions was the quality and the fact
that anyone had something interesting to say.
No superstars, no favouritisms. His sense of balance was remarkable.
This is virtually unheard of. Too often I have tried to participate in
periodicals or books here, the rest of Europe or in America and found a
barrage of editors that valued the work according to 'fame',   a few
even wanted the work for free, didn't know anything about paleontology
and the only thing they tried to do is to please  (and appease in their
ignorance) themselves and popular audiences. Nothing wrong with pleasing
popular audiences... but it is the duty of editors, paleontologists and
artists alike to inform and instruct, not to perpetuate myths and
prejudices in order to just 'sell'.

One thing that I value most of all at editorial level is respect and
care for whatever work  the collaborators, authors and artists  do. And
I did get plenty of that from Mr. Inoue.
Maasaki  Inoue was one of the least dogmatic persons I know in his
approach to how to make a quality dinosaur magazine. And he was not
alone. All the contributors to his dream felt devoted to Dinopress, not
only for the quality of the product but for his honesty and openness.

The Dinopress project should be re-activated  as a tribute to him and as
a promotional platform for paleontology around the world.  Maybe we even
could get interested paleoart promoters like John Lanzendorf. If he has
created the John Lanzendorf dinoart award fund for the SVP I think that
kind money-backing  would also be a lot  useful in the support of such a
high quality periodical as Dinopress that serves as a real platform for
diffussion of paleo research, paleo art and paleo contributions at a
popular level.
Everybody with something to say has a place in the project as long as it
is rigorous, interesting, well researched or simply well done.
Maybe the clue is finding the right place in the world to do that kind
of publication. And Japan may well be the right place.

Dinosaur art  and paleontological knowledge should go together as part
of an academic movement. But that movement should reach popular
audiences.  And for this we need viable outlets for promotion. Excellent
to have technical academic papers, but for many of us it would be even
more important to made them understandable and attractive to popular
audiences.
Maasaki Inoue understood this and declared independence.
It may well be that we in England, Europe or America lack the money,
organisational skills, passion, honesty and care to create a publication
like Dinopress. For anyone cynical enough to say : "There's no market or
money for it" the mere existence of Dinopress in the middle of an
economic crisis can be a demonstration to the contrary.
It was always a joy to receive and explore every Dinopress issue.
However I never expected that Dinopress would last so long I must say...
main problem was (apart from being pricey) that it was mainly in
Japanese and could never get as much popular audience in the rest of the
world.

But everything can be fixed, and the responsible Japanese editors
(Maasaki as the foremost) have demonstrated that they indeed DO have the
organisational skills, passion and interest.

Can Dinopress rise from the ashes? I think it could and it should be a
most deserved tribute to the life of Maasaki Inoue.


Luis Rey

Visit my website on http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~luisrey