A lot of you guys have simply out-grown the grand old gun magazines that taught and told you so much back when you knew so little.
... a lot of us have bought, subscribed to and read these gun mags for years and all the info is starting to sound the same, 'cause we've read it somewhere before over the years and it's starting to sound stale.
Back when I was Editor of
Handloader and
Rifle, a number of readers told me � in very nearly the same words every time � that what they liked the most about our magazines was that we didn't keep rehashing the same basic stuff year in and year out. They said they'd learned a lot,
at first, from the "repeater" magazines but no longer found them as interesting, informative, or edifying as ours.
FWIW, one of my main editorial criteria was that articles on any subject should offer something to readers who already knew a great deal about that subject � no "Introducing the .30-06," for example. That's a tough criterion. It's nearly impossible for any one writer, no matter how good he is or how much he knows, to turn-in an article and a column that'll meet that criterion every month.
So I prefer both reading and publishing the work of one-time writers � guys who put-in the work, come-up with something good maybe
once, and never turn-in another such article. I understand modern Editors' preference for a stable of dependable pro staff writers, but I don't like to see a magazine depend entirely on staff writers � especially when they
tell their writers what to write about instead of turning them loose to think freely and creatively along their own lines of deep interest.
More and more, Internet forums like this one reveal the widening gulf between the interests of knowledgeable readers and the normal monthly diet offered them in the magazine racks.
