Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Magazine article length in the old days

Does missing the "good old days" mean you are getting older ?

Bob,

The other side-effect of the Internet is that when somebody mentions an interesting magazine article here, somebody else often responds with, "Got a link?"

Bob,

The other side-effect of the Internet is that when somebody mentions an interesting magazine article here, somebody else often responds with, "Got a link?"

When I started writing for magazines in the mid-1970's, the normal length of feature articles was at least 2500 words, often 3000-3500, and occasionally even longer. I didn't start writing for gun magazines until the late 1980's, and length ranged about the same, depending on the magazine.

Around 2000 this started changing, because of the Internet and cable television. Contrary to what some people believe, magazine publishing is still quite viable, but the "communications market" has become more diversified. Most magazines also have some sort of Internet version, along with other Internet content, and many also use TV. Consequently the advertising revenue is split, and since ad revenue pays for printing, magazines that used to run 120-180 pages are often 100 or even less. This doesn't mean they're dying, but just one part of a bigger market, instead of THE market, as they pretty much were before 2000.

Of the half-dozen or so print magazines I write for, only two run 2500 word features anymore. The rest cap them at 2000-2200 words, though occasionally somebody asks for as little as 1500--which was standard "column" length when I started out. These days that's a long column; most run 800-1200 words.

One of the odd contradictions in all this is that Internet article lengths are often much shorter than in print magazines, when in theory they can be longer without adding the substantial extra cost of printing more paper pages. But apparently the Internet and cable have shortened the average American's attention span. We're used to getting information not just in shorter "articles" but in paragraphs or even sentences.

The thing that bugs me about the shorter articles is that you feel like you’re just getting into the meat of it and then they

That's very

OTOH you can dismiss 75% of what you read on the Internet and never miss a beat.

Here on the net I can write about what I want and even ask questions. Never did that with the old 'paper'.

What we really need here (BUY LEUPOLD!!!) on this particular Internet (BARNES TTSX GREATEST BULLET EVER@#%!) site is more ads mixed (WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?) in with the posts.