Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A little (hopefully) constructive criticism

You guys in the gun writing business really have your work cut out for you when doing reviews of new guns and/or gun related products. I know and understand that we "moderns" seem to "carry our feelings on our shirtsleeves" as the old folks used to say, and that people are very easily offended, and some seem to go around just LOOKING for something to complain about. That surely must make your jobs a real pain and challenge at times, and kind'a put you "between a rock and a hard place" at times.

Older, more traditional oriented guys like myself really miss some of the old commentators/evaluators like Elmer Keith, who pretty much said what he thought, without more than a passing respect for whose "feelings" may be hurt. He, and others, just cared about the simple truth of what he thought and found.

Many seem to complain that every new gun or product that comes out gets "rave reviews." While that's not always true, I can't help but have come to not fully trust new gun reviews these days, and there are many, many more like me out here in consumer land. That you guys get aspersions cast toward you isn't always fair, but it's just a result of the general "mood" that seems to pervade our country these days, and most critics seem to go too far in discounting what you write. It's a no-win situation for everyone, it seems!

With these facts acknowledged and in mind, I'd like to at least try to provide a little constructive (at least it's intended that way) criticism.

I think John Wooters was one of the old time writers that's now gone from the range, who used to use the old Joe Friday "just the facts ma'am" approach to gun reviews. He gave his opinions, and noted he was prejudiced by his simple preferences where applicable, and let the reader decide what he thought about new guns. I think this approach could, over a little time at least, lead to factories and their reps and lackies being more acceptable of genuine constructive criticism. It's tended to work in the past about as well as any type of criticism can. It just might prove valuable in that regard now.

There's also the old "yes, but" technique, also. Figuring out how best to deliver "bad news" these days is a touchy and very delicate subject, given the touchy and sometimes volatile nature of business, advertisers, etc., but if you don't give us shooters what we need and want, we quit buying your magazines. I now only pick up a Handloader or Rifle magazine, and sometimes a Shooting Times, when I see something in them I want. I don't subscribe to any, and haven't in a long time, and I miss the glossy mags, but just can't see sending my good money in for something that's just not really helpful or even very interesting now.

I offer these comments in hopes that you guys will once again figure out how to give us something more like what we used to have. I know it's a tall order, what with the "social" factors involved in business, commerce and publishing these days, but ... I really miss the old glossies, and would like to find more reason to subscribe again. I usued to subscribe to 4-6 or even more of them. Now it's zero, and like I said, I really miss them.

I'd hate like the dickens to be in your shoes, but to give you a little praise as well, I think you all did the right thing when Rem. recently took over Marlin. When the first Remlins, as they've now come to be called, came out and just flat didn't work, you kept it quiet, and sent them back telling Rem. of the problems, and refused, IIRC, to write them up until the problems were fixed. Rem. also is to be praised for doing the right thing and apparently (so I've heard at least) getting them to work now.

Life's never easy for anyone, but you gunwriters kind'a walk a pretty fine line at times, and it just seems to me that taking the easiest and "safest" way out has rendered your magazines and articles to be something less than fully satisfying in too many cases.

I don't have the expertise to offer real solutions to this, bu the gun and accessory companies can't get the word out unnless buyers subscribe and/or buy the mags, and it seems to me that this is a factor that both some editors and companies and advertisers leave out that they probably shouldn't.

Not casting aspersions here. Everybody needs to respond as best they can and know how in these litigious and volatile times, and publishing ain't an easy way to make a buck, I realize. Just thought it might be useful to submit my thoughts. You guys do an awfully good job sometimes, and those are the articles I now buy individual issues for, but I'd really like to subscribe to a number of magazines again, and just thought I'd let you know. I think there are a lot of us out here like me, too, that just don't show up on polls, and have to be guessed at as to how we affect the almighty "bottom line" that in fact DOES allow you to stay in business and produce some good reading and interesting and/or valuable info.

Thanks for all you do and try to do, but I'd really like to see some more honesty and personal opinion. It sometimes makes the articles worth reading.

Here here! Maybe now these guys will see the light.

I saw the light! I saw the light!
No more darkness. No more night.
Now I'm so happy! No sorrow in sight!
Praise be to Tikkas, I saw the light!

Remingtons suck.
No. Really.

Blessed be those, who having nothing to say, refrain from giving us wordy evidence thereof.

Praise be! Huzzah!

That's the reason I quit buying gun rags. Most of the reviews cannot be trusted.

It's damn hard to make a living as a magazine writer. That was true 15 years ago, and from what those in the industry tell me, "the money's gone out of it". As if there ever was any. The bottom line, the best new talent coming onto any magazine's staff usually find something to do within a few years that allows them to live a much better life.

So you generally have old-timers who surrendered their souls to the ad sales department many moons ago, and possibly the occasional talented young enthusiast who is on his way to bigger and better things. Then you have contract writers. For some of them, writing supplements/leverages/amplifies other activities where their rent is actually paid. They can provide real value to the magazine and to the shooting community, but what you see in print is likely overflow from something else that paid a lot more. Others are hobbyists dabbling in the publishing world to take their fun to another level.

Some are independently wealthy or otherwise retired early and mess around with writing about stuff as a way to have fun (traveling to product intros, going to shows, etc.) on someone else's dime. Simply being available to do "work" that pays maybe $7/hour when you total it up makes them a resource for editors. They don't have to be particularly good or deeply knowledgeable, as long as they produce copy that can be edited to be reasonably readable and represent the magazine reasonably well to the industry when on its business.

There are structural problems, too. A magazine depends on access to items that are not in production yet. If you don't make the manufacturers happy, you won't be on the list. Which means you'll have to wait for it to become available, and will always be last to publish your review by anywhere from a few to many months. If you're always last to market, you're not going to get the readers. And buying one of the first to market of everything you test isn't something any publisher I have heard of is up for.

I could write pages about this topic, but many others already have.

The true professional with integrity, making a living writing about a technical field, is extremely rare, and to be treasured.

The biggest thing that has changed is that the readership is far more tuned in, experienced and critical of what they read.

A writer can "tell it like it is", meaning writing his experience factually and still get challenges because a reader had a differing personal experience.

That is actually ok and realistic, as long as the critic is also "telling it like it is" and not flavoring his version for the purpose of denigration, a hugely popular and growing sport.

John

Denigration can be entirely appropriate in some situations, such as when the writer advises people to practice unsafe load development practices and refuses to ever acknowledge same.

David

Well, I had on my asbestos suit when I posted this, and as to being wordy, I felt I HAD to at least try to explain myself, and that just doesn't lend itself to "sound byte" type posts, so .... I'll take the heat, and gladly, IF I can just make a valid point. I didn't just start reading the glossies yesterday, and I didn't decide to not renew my subscriptions some years back for no reason, either. I do still pick up an occasional copy, but not very often, and have started buying others, like Muzzleloader, that have historical stuff and good and mostly forgotten info that I can actually USE.

When these magazines just don't provide me with anything I can actually USE and TRUST, why should I part with my good dollars to pay for it??? If you don't like what I said, that's fine, and I expected some of that, but unless you can provide a reason for me to spend my money for something of very minimal use to me, then you're whizzing up a rope, and I don't think I'll be guiding my behavior on a basis like that.

The tendency for reviews to be a bit too PC for me to trust them, under the threat of pulled ad money, really inhibits the "free exchange of info" among us shooters, and I see that as something we'll all wind up paying for sooner or later. I do NOT want to see that, so I thought I'd state my case, and win, lose or draw, flames or no flames, whether it's taken as intended or not, it's what I REALLY think, and why I just don't buy the glossies any more.

Like I said, I'd really, really LIKE to, but I just can't do it with what little there is in them these days that I can use and trust. I'm not criticizing, and I tried to make that plain. I'm just appealing to those in a position to make some decisions to bring back some candor, and I really don't think that's too much to ask. Yeah, there are problems attendant to that. There always HAVE been, but the problems were met with intelligence, fairness and determination, and not a little dedication to the simple truth.

So I'm making an appeal here, and whether it falls on fertile ground or deaf ears will be manifest, I think, and maybe not too long in coming, one way or the other.

I really miss subscribing, but I have to have a REASON to reup. I'd just like to have that reason to do so again. That's all, really.

I know a lot of people do not care for Chuck Hawks and Randy Wakeman. I certainly don't agree with everything they write. But I do respect that when they review a product and don't care for it they say so.

Blackwater,

You’re right in some ways, but overall couldn’t be more wrong.

The change in hunting and shooting magazines started in the 1980’s, when a relatively small magazine company in New York City decided they could attract more advertising by promising manufacturers coverage in articles. This worked, and they started selling more ads.

Before this, most magazines sold ads primarily by publishing magazines that attracted a lot of readers. Ads make up a big part of the profit in any commercial magazine, and the more copies any magazine sells, the more they can charge for ads. The old theory of publishing was to produce magazines people wanted to read, and more companies would want to buy ads because lots of people would see the ads.

The small company in New York, however, decided to please advertisers instead. This worked—at least in the short run—and some other magazine publishers noticed. One was a guy who’d made the Fortune 500 list by starting and buying magazines, and though he was already rich beyond the comprehension of most Americans, he even started charging money to companies—including hunting outfitters—for a mere MENTION of their company in an article. (As somebody noted at the time, he didn’t need the few thousand bucks this generated. Instead it was simply another way of keeping score.) Eventually his publishing company even guaranteed “editorial coverage” of any advertiser’s products in magazine columns and feature articles.

Even then there were still some magazines run the old-fashioned way, by trying to attract readers by running stories they wanted to read. But early in 2008 the Great Recession hit, and many advertisers felt the pinch and bought fewer ads. However, by the end of 2008 the shooting industry started recovering, due to the presidential election of the greatest firearms salesman of the 21st century.

Consequently, all of a sudden shooting industry companies didn’t have to buy many ads, because Obama was promoting their business for them. This accelerated after his reelection, and almost every publishing company in the business started trying to attract and keep advertisers by running more articles mentioning various products.

The eventual result of this trend, of course, was advertisers EXPECTING favorable editorial coverage, even if it wasn’t spelled out in their contract. It became almost impossible for any magazine company to operate without some sort of friendly agreement with advertisers. To refuse would only drive advertisers to other magazines.

One side-effect, of course, was readers like you didn’t like to read the magazines much, so dropped their subscriptions. They might buy one off the newsstand now and then, if an article interested them, but some readers aren’t going to subscribe to magazines where many of the articles are essentially ads. This became especially obvious in hunting magazines, where “hunting stories” turned into writers or even magazine editors taking a new gun or scope on a guided hunt.

Now, hunters and shooters aren’t totally without blame for all of this. As Americans become more urban over the last half of the 20th century, more wanted their equipment to handle more of the job, whether shooting tiny groups off a benchrest or killing a deer during their annual hunt. Most Americans don’t get a chance to shoot and hunt as much as we used to, because so many of us live in cities where shooting ranges and hunting country are farther away and more expensive. So we became fixated on buying a new rifle or scope to perform better during our little windows of opportunity, one reason shooting and hunting magazines have become less about technique than gear.

The Internet also had several effects. Information can be published and distributed much cheaper via cyberspace than printing it on paper, and we became used to (supposedly) learning stuff by Googling it, rather than reading long articles and then trying techniques on the range or in the field. We also became used to getting it free. Almost any time some Campfire mentions a good magazine article, somebody posts, “Got a link?”

This is all related to the shorter attention span of modern readers. In theory it should be much cheaper, and hence possible, to publish long, in-depth articles on the Internet. But despite what some old-timers say, most readers do NOT want to wade through the 3000-word articles that used to be published in print magazines.

Instead they want all their answers short and easy, and on a forum like this they often get dozens of one-sentence or even one-word answers. In fact, I bet a bunch of people won’t even read this post, because it’s over 1000 words long, just as many Campfire members don’t read anything other than a thread’s header before responding. In a way it’s like American voting: Everybody gets a say, no matter their level of experience or analytic ability—which is how the country ended up electing the greatest firearms salesman ever.

So yeah, shooting magazines have changed, but not because of the writers. Magazines changed because of the decision of one small magazine company to please advertisers rather than readers. Ironically, that company isn’t doing very well these days, because so many bigger publishing companies followed their lead.

Writers have never had much leverage in this business, partly because so many people can do it part-time. Quite a few publish articles just to see their name in print. (Photography is even worse these days, thanks to all-automatic digital cameras.)

Essentially magazine writers are like workers in a factory. Some get paid more than others, like the engineers at Ford, but telling writers to write totally different types or articles is like telling workers at Ford to build Toyotas. The decisions on what parts and vehicles to produce aren’t made by the workers, but by owners. It’s the same way in the magazine business.

Luckily for writers like me, who’ve been around for a long time, the Internet has made it easier to go directly to readers. While I still do a lot of magazine work, mostly for magazines that care more about readers than advertisers, a lot of my income these days comes from going directly to readers. But if you really want to affect the types of articles you see in many shooting magazines these days, don’t complain to the writers. Complain to the magazine owners, because they make the decisions.

MD, read your article. Thank you very much. Your points, spanning a much greater timeframe of experience than mine, mirrors mine from Europe.

Blackwater, thank you for this interesting topic.

Great explanation John. Thanks, and BTW I read all 1000 words.

Another nugget from MD,

As a compulsive reader I miss the old ways.

Thanks John, always nice to see something written that makes sense,

Geno

What really makes the magazine interesting are the unique characters that are written about...

Article: "Self Promoters of Bozeman"

Good idea for a book...

Amen John.

I used to subscribe to many magazines. The varmint hunters were the best. Many articles written by subscribers, and lots of them. It was as close to the internet forum as you could get. Two things changed with magazines for me.

One, the new gear reviews were not as honest as I like. It was plain to see it was advertising.

Two, the internet is more interesting and relevant in several ways. The biggest being more current, real-time, and varied information available to me. I can get more relevant-to-me-and-my-situation information in minutes than I can filter through an entire year's subscription to any magazine.

For example- Posting here on a Savage 99 .284 Winchester, I asked which hunting bullet would work best for this particular action. 145 gr. Speer BTSP came up several times. I bought some here, tried them, and now have all I need for a lifetime of shooting, all thanks to the internet. How many years of magazine subscriptions could I read that would never yield that information to me? Can you imagine the odds against ever finding that information in any magazine, coupled with the unlikelihood I would happen to read it, when I actually needed it? Staggering odds against me ever finding what I need. Yet, it only took a few minutes on the internet and I had a direction to go and a plan to get there. That's just one example. The application of the internet community to real world issues is endless.

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, printed material is outdated for most modern readers. Most are very content with instant information verified by an entire community of end users rather than a single man's opinion printed a month or more ago in a magazine.

Reading for entertainment is excepted.