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

I have been enjoying a look to the past with Handloader's 50'th anniversary articles. The last one about the .44 magnum that Keith wrote was probably 2x the length of current articles? Anyway, it was quite informative AND entertaining.

Was that a standard size article back then? I did not start reading gun magazines until the early to mid 70's. He did some blasting in the article, birds included!

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.

Thanks for the response and insight. Yep, I agree. Attention span while looking at a screen is way less. I much rather read something in print. It is not as fatiguing, at least for me.

Those 500+ yard shots at running game would get a person FLAMED on the internet!

What John said. As the allowable length of articles shrank, the writer was forced to leave out more and more background material and explanations. If you read some of Ken Waters work, you'll see what I mean. He sometimes spent 2,000 words describing his methodology for a given cartridge test. That's before he got into his results, which were just as extensively documented.

Today, what the reader gets is hardly more than an executive summary. Often, that doesn't do the subject justice at all.

I'm glad to be out of it, frankly.

Rocky, yep. Ken Waters is a great example. Maybe that's why his old articles in pet Loads are so much fun to read.

Rocky,

One way to cope with shrinking articles is to write books--and contrary to what some believe they're also doing quite well. (I just read a very interesting, but short, newspaper article with some interesting statistics on that very subject.) These days my books are mostly collections of previously magazine articles that I revise, add to, update and combine into chapters. Often I end up doing 2-3 magazine articles on different aspects of a subject, then combine them into one book chapter.

Interestingly, many book buyers ARE more interested in larger books, apparently because they tend to contain more detail, background info, etc. Internet users are the opposite, looking for one-sentence answers to everything, especially if they don't have to pay for the sentence.

I, for one would be willing to pay a bit more for more in-depth articles, but I'm a pretty small market. I enjoy the special editions Wolfe puts out very much; the only problem is finding them locally.

It seems like one could also read an article without skipping pages as much back in the day. That's really annoying. I don't read magazines much anymore. I don't mind buying a book if it has what I want and good value for the content.

True. Based on what I see they feel entitled to the info "right now".

"Tell me the best load....the best bullet....how fast am I going?.....someone do QL for me...Best scope? Why? Explain?.."

They feel entitled to answers. Half the dumb ass questions asked on here could be answered if people would either shoot or hunt and figure the stuff out for themselves.

Books are generally far more interesting since they tend to be written by people who actually know what they are talking about. OTOH you can dismiss 75% of what you read on the Internet and never miss a beat.

This is a good thread, with good explanations and good thoughts. Put me in the "more is better" camp.

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?"

I rarely read hunting magazines anymore as the format of the stories has changed. At one time the authors took us along on their adventures now their stories are basically advertising for the latest and newest clothing or whiz bang calibre.

They no longer entertain us.

There are still some decent technical articles that are worth reading. I do like Handloader and Rifle because of that.

Then there's the death of the freelancer. Fewer pages mean not just shorter articles but fewer of them. By the time an editor fits in articles from his staff writers, there's simply no room left for something by a non-staffer.

Back when, a freelancer could spend a lot of range time, effort, and research to do an in-depth piece on something interesting but out of the mainstream. Not now.

Although I used to be able to get immediate acceptance in annuals and many monthly magazines, in the end I was down to Varmint Hunter and Handloader. Then Handloader told me they had a three to five-year backlog of freelance pieces. I could continue to submit, but should not expect to see print. Finally, Varmint Hunter abruptly went extinct.

I still have pieces with both of them that will never run. And that's why I quit doing them.

Tuchodi,

I explained the reason for advertising thinly disguised as articles in another thread a year or so ago. The trend started in the 1980's, when a magazine company in New York decided they could sell a lot more advertising (and so make a lot more money) if they promised advertisers favorable mention in articles.

This hadn't really been done before, at least to such a blatant extent. Before then, most magazines were run to attract readers, because the more readers they had the more they could charge for advertising. But the company's new technique reversed the old method. Instead they ran the magazine to attract advertisers.

In the short run this does make more money, but in the long run drives away readers, exactly as it did you. But the unfortunate side-effect was that more publishing companies decided to use the same technique, especially after competition from the Internet and TV became stronger. This had the side-effect of advertisers EXPECTING editorial mentions of their products, and if one magazine wouldn't promise that, the advertiser would take their money to another magazine.

Some magazines still try to draw some sort of line against this trend, but so many advertisers expect some editorial "payoff" that it's impossible to buck totally. Which is why some magazines tend to split their content between "real" articles and "advertiser" articles.

Which is also why books are still selling pretty well to people who want to be entertained and informed, and why a few publications don't take advertising, depending instead on subscription money. But that's also a hard way to go these days, when due to the Internet so many readers expect everything to be free.

The irony in all this is the New York magazine publisher that started the trend recently went broke and closed its doors, because not enough people bought their magazines OR paid for advertising anymore.

Rocky,

Yep, the entire trend has made it difficult not just for freelancers but even those writers who simply want to break in. It's sort of a closed club anymore, one reason I'm really glad to have started in the 1970's, when an ambitious freelancer could get a foot in the door--and pay was better. I also feel lucky to be nearing what most people call "retirement," though I probably never will totally retire.

It's also why Eileen and I decided to go directly to our readers about 10-12 years ago and start publishing our own books and on-line magazine--which doesn't have any advertising.

Yeah, how many questions have you seen here that could be answered by a 15-second Google search?

The last couple of times I went to SHOT I was saddened by the affiliations on "journalist" name tags I saw in the Press Room. More than half of them were for "blogs" of one kind or other. Meaning those "journalists" were just guys running some sort of internet page themselves.

Some of them may have been more or less legitimate outlets for shooting and hunting news. But I'd bet that more of them were claiming to be reporters just to get in. (Guess who had the largest, fullest "gimme" bags. Yup.)

Yep, I quit taking a bag to SHOT many years ago. Otherwise people wanted to fill it with extraneous stuff.

Then I quit going to SHOT, because it had gotten so huge, thanks to bloggers and other extraneous humans, that neither I or the people I wanted to talk to (and who wanted to talk to me) had time after pushing through the crowds. I guess the high attendance is good PR for the NSSF, but it's lousy for gun writers getting stuff done. Unless, of course, they're blogging every day on what's "new and exciting."

Oh gosh, yes. I carried a small shoulder bag for my camera, notebook, and a couple PB&J sammiches (no $15 hamburgers for me) yet some booth folks still foisted full gimme bags on me as kind of reverse payment to get to talk to people. A lot of the time, I'd get out of sight and just set the thing down.

Aside from seeing a few old friends and editors there's nothing at all I miss about SHOT.

But that's getting way off topic.