Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Will the internet be the death of the gun rags?

A few years back I bought hunting and fishing mags pretty regularly. So far this year I've bought none... The reason for this is clear (to me), I've gotten my "fix" from online forums. I still buy magazines if I see an cover article that interests me, usually a new product review for a gun that interests me but seldom otherwise. Surely I'm not the only one who's found this to be true.

Now I have no gunwriters in mind that I dislike, though I do have a few in mind that I follow to some degree. I say that only to make clear that I don't have a chip on my shoulder regarding the writers. That being said, some of the most interesting storytellers out there (here) aren't gunwriters at all to tbe best of my knowledge. Not to say that the gunwriters here are bad, on the contrary, we just have some exceptional non-writers around. I'm sure some others feel the same way, maybe to a varying degree.

When I first came to this site I read for weeks on old posts on topics that interested me, figured out who here was credible (doesn't take long), and then read what they had to say on various topics. When I read a magazine, unless I'm reading a well known writer or have been following the magazine regularly I can't have the same insight into the writers past and therefore, credibility. It's nice to know just how many grains of salt to take someone's advice with.

Lastly, there is the economic reasons for the 'net stealing readers. I haven't recieved any bills from RicBin yet so I'm assuming this place is free (grin). The last mag I bought was an issue of Reloading for $7.99. For the price of two of those I could get a pound of H335. With magazine prices growing and the forum prices staying constant (free) I'd venture to guess that I'm not the first to have this epiphany.

Now back to the question; do YOU think the internet will be the death of the gun rags? Maybe not extinction but maybe an endangered species?

No way! A wireless connected laptop, will never take the place of a good magazine while on the crapper. It just ain't civilized!

Jeff

What Jeff said. miles

You can not roll up the computer and swat the dog with it when he misbehaves.

BCR

FWIW, I don't know anything about the future but as Richard Russel says, the internet is a powerful engine of deflation. I imagine within the next economic turndown the plethora of gunrags will diminish some and maybe the I-net will be a factor.

It certainly has made the "old boys network" of hiding expert information difficult. With a little searching one can find full disclosure from all over the globe. Real and accurate information makes generalizations masked as advice look unschooled. I imagine this pressures gunwriters to put a lot more effort/research into each piece or it will have that effect in time.

I've noticed some of the gunrag scribes have gotton their panties in a wad over the internet gun/shooting sites. It's funny to read Ross Siegfried & Dave Scovill whine endlessly. They must be worried...

The Internet will not replace the good shooting magazines anytime soon. There is not yet an economical way to get high quality well researched articles by professionals in the field onto this medium; we will not pay for it.
The Internet is for us enthusiastic, serious plinkers. Depending on the forum we can be serious and share real information, or we can argue and roll in the mud. I believe the Internet is now where the outdoor magazines were in the late 1920' or early '30's, all of us who contribute feel we have ownership. The Internet will grow and mature but those of us who appreciate the printed page will still buy magazines.
Writers like Jim Foral or Ross Seyfried have nothing to fear from the Internet. It will be a very long time before you see in-depth and interesting articles such as these two submit floating around on the Internet. The real problem for editors is replacing men like Ken Waters, C. E. Harris and W. C. Davis as they retire. I am a hunter but I do not have a lot of interest in hunting stories.

I've picked up a new habit since John Barsness has started hanging out here a bit.

If he gives us advice on something that interests me, and tells of an upcoming article in Rifle or Handloader that goes into detail on the subject, I make it a point to buy that issue. Chances are I'd buy it anyway, but it just seems like an honourable thing to do to support the gun writer who gives so freely here. I hope I'm not alone in this respect.

I'll jump in here. I work in an university library and have seen the internet grow almost imcomprehensively in the last 10 years. While desktop access of journal articles has mushroomed, the need for paper copies has not really diminished at all. Part of this might be due to the need for historical reference (remember this is an academic library) and that need might not apply to the recreational magazine reader. Our periodicals become part of our permanent collection, and electronic access isn't guaranteed forever as the publisher might go out of business or get bought out, a magazine might fold or become obsolete due to a variety of reasons. Once you buy a paper copy, it can last for a very long time given reasonable care. Access from a publishers database is dependant upon that publisher staying in business. A computer virus or hard drive failure can wipe out your entire downloaded collection in a lot less time than it takes to read this.

One format that is being pushed lately is downloading a magazine volume electronically. Some computer news magazines have gone to this format. The magazine is displayed on the screen just like the paper edition, similar to an e-book. I find these magazines, and the e-books, harder to read than a paper copy even with a good monitor, and portability is limited. That opinion is shared among many of the professors I've talked to. Neat idea maybe, but the computer technology isn't up to it yet. But even among the ones that do like the delivery means, there is a consensus that the page layout, just like the paper copies, is important to readability. So the editors and copy people should enjoy continued employment for some time to come. And the average reader will still want to see the authors pen new articles. Just like NASCAR, many have their favorite author/driver and will continue to cheer for them, even when they aren't writing anything they don't already know.

There is no satisfaction in having a shelf full of CD as opposed to well worn books, nor do I prefer to digest learned writing by scrolling the screen. Internet forums and chat rooms are the world of two minute snacks, little more. They do challenge however, short and sweet isn't always easy or kind.

RickF - I agree completly.

More than likely I would have bought the mag anyway - but I make ti a point when MD saws there is a good one comming down the pike. I also must say that I am a fan of the adds for various rifle makers and component makers that are in Rifle and Handloader. I buy the mag for them too.

Personally speaking,
I'm much more likely to buy magazines who carry articles by people who freely give of their time and expertise in forums such as this.
I do this for a number of reasons. One, I feel more "connected" to the authors when I have the ability to interact with them on a forum. I like the idea that we as a group might be influencing their ideas just as they influence our own.
Two, I appreciate the fact that they are offering their expertise free of charge. It seems only fair that I buy the magazines that employ them and help them pay their bills.
Third, no amount of internet reading can or ever will replace a basement full of ragged and well worn magazines that allow me the delightful opportunity to go back and re-read articles and look up things that I remember reading in the past.
To those professional writers who post on this list, I say "Have no fear that your posts on this forum will ever cut into the readership of the magazines that employ you." On the contrary, I hope that I speak for many others who (like me) will go out of their way to purchase the same magazines that employ the fine people who give of their time and expertise on this forum - as a way of showing our appreciation.
Brian

I agree in part.

For me, the Campfire has led me to cancel my subscriptions to marginal mags that I only subscribed to in order to help satiate my desire for content. Before the Internet, even the lowliest gunrag was better than nothing as the end of the month rolled around.

Now I can get gun content much more readily - new stuff, every day, and interactive to boot. The marginal stuff need not be renewed. I also found that some mags which I found interesting before are no longer so. Their content is not up to snuff when compared to what I get here.

On the other hand, the good mags are still a joy to receive. Among the things we don't see enough of elsewhere are high-quality, professional pictures of big-game animals in the wild. Those cover shots of huge elk with stuff hanging all over their antlers, dry-mud caked sides, and curled upper lips still drive the blood through my veins. The same for thick-antlered mule deer with swollen necks silhouetted against the skyline, or bedded down in the sage. Goosebumps.

I also find myself enjoying hunting stories more and more. I always enjoy good technical/how-to/reloading-type articles, but we get a lot of that type of content on this site, so a good me-and-Joe story is a nice change of gears.

I'd like to think places like the Campfire fill a unique niche, and raise the collective bar at the same time.

Rick

Rick - it does just that. Like you I don't subscribe to the marginal mags anymore. I really feel it is Handloader, Rifle and then everybody else.

I would like to think that in some small way we here at the campfire have helped, by giving feeback as to what we like to read and asking more indepth questions of stuff we just read. I think that can help the writters as they write the next article - maybe they don't get edited as much or the "me and Joe" stories get run a bit more. I don't know but I think the internet will only make those mags that want to be better better- competition in any form tends to bring out the best in industry.

It may be counter-intuitive, but over the past few years magazine circulation has INCREASED in most areas, despite the ever increasing use of the Internet. Why? People are eager for information.

This is apparent in the number and quality of shooting and hunting magazines. And when I say quality, I don't necessarily mean "good." There are far better magazines in the genre now than there ever were before--and far worse. This because the shooting/hunting public is so eager for information that we support (buy buying and reading) some absolute junk, written by semi-literates who often are spoon-fed article "information" by the advertisers.

Is this a bad thing? I can't say, but it does demonstrate that printed magazines are a growing rather than shrinking business, because there are far more magazines than decent content to fill them all.

Instead of seeing the net and magazines as separate entities, we might look at them as parts of the same whole. The net is much more conducive to instant, short bits of information, and I used it all the time myself for just that purpose.

But for an in-depth look at a certain subject, print is still king. There's no way I can go into the detail about a subject here that I can in a 3500-4000 word magazine article that's taken most of a week to write and most of a month to research. On the Campfire I can barely touch the surface.

For the same reason, no matter how knowledgeable some folks who log onto the Campfire and other sites are, there's no way they can match the amount of inside information some professionals have.

(Note how I said "some" professionals. There are quite a few who just repeat what others have written, never do original research, or even publish opinions when they've never done any research of any kind on the subject.)

There's no way, for instance, that the average rifle loony will ever get to tour several ammo, firearms or optics factories, spend several days in a hunting camp talking to the technical guys from the Big Companies, or spend days inside the shop of top custom riflemakers. The world just doesn't work that way.

So we have two complementary ways to get information. I even use the Campfire this way. I could spend the next five years personally asking people how they've been treated by the customer service departments of various optics firms. Instead I posted a question here, and within two days had 60+ responses. The synopsis of those responses will show up as an article some day, on paper, which hopefully will help shooters make more rational decisions about purchases.

So both cyberspace and paper'n'ink are part of the same information superhighway.

MD

IMHO the Internet has made it much easier to gain knowledge or get a question answered.

If I want to be entertained, I read a magazine (currently subscribe to four).

If I want to find out how to fireform cases, what scope to put on a certain rifle, how to book an African hunt, etc., I ask on the Internet.

One problem with magazines is that it's hard to get a valid evaluation of new products. Every new item is just great, perhaps because an advertiser introduced it, and there is seldom any criticism of anything. Not the case on the Internet, though you have to take some opinions with a grain of salt.

In recent years, I had pretty much stopped buying and reading gun mags as most of them re-cycled the same old b.s. and most of the writers struck me as urban journalists with very little REAL bush experience. I stuck with Rifle and Handloader although they have been difficult to obtain here; because some of the writers published in these journals impressed me. I very carefully read and re-read every article written by Ross Seyfried, he is opinionated and somewhat self-important, but, he knows a lot about guns and shooting, far more than I do.

I also read Phil Shoemaker's commentaries on Bear rifles, absolutely the finest material of it's type I have read in more than 50 yrs. of perusing gun mags. I have sufficient realtime bush experience to judge this accurately and actually carry some rifles identical to some of his with very similar loads.

As a general gun writer and especially regarding hunting rifle handloading, John Barsness is about my favourite; his lack of pompous chestbeating and willingness to change his mind on issues such as barrel breakin make his work both enjoyable and instructive. I second the thanks of the other posters here concerning the free sharing of info. which he might be able to sell and this comradely behaviour is why I will re-new my subscriptions to Rifle and Handloader.

Kutenay-

all i can say is "I wish I would have said that"

Your post was 110% spot on!

Well said Kutenay!

Gene

I enjoy the mags with reader articles. like: eastmans, big game adventures, varmint hunter,and big buck. Some of these have pro writers, but a good mix of subsciber articles. i like the 3 I get from Wolfe publishing. i stay away from primedia.(they publish Seventeen, and shooting times, along with other rags.)