[/quote] I never was editor of Rifle. You're probably thinking of Successful Hunter.
[/quote]
You of course are right. Phil had a column in it and Brian Pearce wrote what he wanted. It was great.[/quote]
Yep!
I never really wanted to be a magazine editor, but ended up doing it three times. Was pretty successful at all three jobs, partly because I learned a lot from various editors I wrote for. One was Robert Creamer, the editor of Sports Illustrated, who bought a few of my articles in the 1970s, when SI still ran quite a few hunting and fishing stuff. Bob once said that the secret to being a successful magazine editor was finding good writers. And he was right.
Jack O'Connor wrote, I believe in The Last Book, that unless an editor has a feel for what readers want to read, he'll never be really successful. In my experience that's also a major factor. Quite a few head editors get the job because they spent years as an assistant editor, and for some reason never really got a feel for what the readers wanted. One I remember well was exactly that, a guy who ended up editing two highly successful magazines (at the time), and then never recognizing what he needed to do as the older (and very good) staff writers started to retire. He picked replacements that were a lot like him, guys who'd worked in the business for a long time but never gained any major following. They wrote competent but unexciting articles.
