The role of a magazine editor is a funny one. Rather like teaching or nursing, I guess it’s one of the few jobs where the loyalty of the person lies not with those who pay the salary, but with others.

In the case of the editor, it’s the readers to whom the editor feels greatest loyalty.

An editor genuinely believes they have an obligation to produce the very best magazine possible for readers. So editors spend many dozens of hours per working week doing it for nothing – attending events, working overtime to get issues finished, waking up in the night to come up with story ideas.

In enthusiast car magazines, few editors get a salary anywhere near commensurate with the hours worked, and the effort that is made in those hours.

(In fact, the only people I have ever seen make real money writing for magazines are those that freelance. Because they’re primarily concerned with just getting as many articles or photos out the door as possible – rather than enhancing and responding to a relationship with readers – their productivity can be very high.)

I last edited a paper magazine a little over 10 years ago – an eternity in magazine publishing terms. The magazine I founded and edited – Zoom – was then sold to a different publisher and my services were no longer required. Every cloud has a silver lining – after that, Web Publications was born and we started AutoSpeed. (And I’d rather be working for AutoSpeed than doing any other job in automotive journalism!)

But it is with genuine empathy that I read the current editor of Zoom has just lost his job, along with editors of Street Commodores, Fast Fours and a number of other automotive magazines in the Express Publications portfolio.

I haven’t read – or even glanced through – any of these magazines for many years, so it’s of no personal consequence what happens to their staff or magazines.

However, I do feel for the guys who have gone, because I know only too well the heartache that occurs when you’re wrenched, not from your salaried position, but from your readers – without even a chance to farewell them.

As I said, it’s a funny job, being an editor.