I love that you are on here and continue to post so genuinely. Thank you.
Sorry so many are disappointed in the new issue. But would like to point out a few things:
The July 2019 issue was 62 pages--four more than this issue. Slim gun magazines are typical this time of year, because advertising is at its lowest level of the year--and advertising pays a large part of the cost of printing and mailing.
But it tends to rise from now through fall and winter, due to hunting seasons, and introductions of new products after the first of the year, at the SHOT Show and others. Which is why gun magazines will soon be thicker. (That said, I doubt advertising--and hence issue size--will be vastly larger, due to the effect of the coronavirus on the economy. But I also doubt it will have as much of a long-term effect on the economy as some predict, though who knows?)
The length of articles is limited by the number of pages any magazine can afford to print, NOT by how much the writers are paid. Right now Wolfe limits articles to around 2500 words, about 500 words less than the average when I started working for them in the early 1990s.
Since 2007 the owner of Wolfe has been Don Polacek, who was hired by the previous owner to work in the mail-room, then worked his way up through various jobs to head of advertising. Eventually he expanded that to offering more reader services, such as loaddata.com. When the former owner retired, he decided to sell to Don--who is NOT an "outside," MBA take-over artist. This is his only business--and hence job.
One the realities of gun writing is that gun writers get older, and eventually retire or even die. Many of us grew up reading certain writers, and as a result they were considered the standard--but THEY all started as younger men, when older writers were the standard. Many of what were considered the young gun writers 20-30 years ago are now starting to be older gun writers, which means they're starting to at least semi-retire, so are being replaced by younger gun writers.
Whether those young gun writers eventually become old and respected, like the writers they're replacing, is another question. But just as the original staff writers of Rifle and Handloader (the ones I grew up reading such as Bob Hagel and Ken Waters) were replaced by younger writers, the present generation will be replaced. I am 67, John Haviland a year or so younger, and Mike Venturino and Terry Wieland a little older. Even that young punk Brian Pearce is pushing 60. Writers usually never retire completely, but most choose to slow down--and consequently younger writers take up the slack.
I've found over the years that a LOT of gun-writer popularity depends on whether readers (say the average 60-70 year-old Campfire member) agree with what they say, thus confirming their own opinions. Since readers younger than 70 years old are starting to turn into the majority, the articles are bound to be different.
If you really want to change things at Wolfe, you'd be better off letting them know directly--or subtracting 20-30 years from your age.
