Are The Gun Rags Hurting?

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I like the adds in the back...

Maxoderm, Absinthe, and Pajamas & Stuffed animals...


So after cleaning the firearms, I break our the Absinthe, give my wife a new teddy bear and some slinky jammies and then get the maxoderm out... bom chicka wa wa... {/sarcasm...
 
The Gun Mags. are like much of the other print press. They are just out of touch with the readers. You don't really have the Hands On reporters of the days gone by. Most reporters or writers are lazy. They just take Ads that cross their desk and some stupid remarks, that they think are funny and ask you to pay them for it.
In the days O'Conner,Kieth, Cooper Etc. They went out and used the fire arms and kept in touch with the shooting public. They could connect with other shooters. You can tell how bad it is by the size of the Mags, They are so thin they look like like those give away ads.
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Ranger 40: I write for gun publications. Every firearm review I do involves going to the range, pulling the trigger umpteen times, running rounds over a chronograph, taking the gun apart, putting it back together, seeing how it runs and trying to identify the problem if it doesn't.

If I find something I don't like about a gun, I say so. If there's something that didn't work right, I say that, too, and explain what I think the problem is.

Other gun writers of my acquaintance do pretty much the same thing, perhaps differently from one detail to the next, but I've seen no evidence of the kind of B.S. you're describing.

Frankly, considering everything that goes into the evaluations I and others do, I find such remarks rather uninformed.
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I think Workman is right. Look, most modern firearms from reputable manufacturers consistantly go boom and do so with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Hence the endorsement of most reviews.

That notwithstanding, I do regularly see the reviewers in some magazines pointing out the weaknesses of the guns they review. Case inpoint, My most recent edition of Guns had an article by Ayoob that reviewed Springer's 9mm EMP. He was impressed but pointed out several weaknesses and even said that he had to send the first sample gun back to the manufacturer. You can't ask for more honesty than that.

What is more, I find that most reviewers clearly explain their range time with a given firearm.
 
I work for a magazine (not gun related) and ad revenue is how a mag makes money. By giving away subscriptions they increase their readership numbers thus allowing them to charge more for ads. When they are audited they can say we can guarantee x,000 more readers this quarter so they charge a higher rate base.
I don't have a problem with the rags because:
1 they are good for people new to the gun world.
2 they have nice pics
3 they do contain some information
4 anything firearms related that is available for public consumption ie: Barnes & Noble, Walmart etc. is good because it keeps firearms in the mainstream
5 As with anything, take it with a grain of salt.
I never understood all this mag bashing. We should be happy that there are magazines that cater to our hobby.
Can they be improved? Sure but not every mag is going to be the Consumer Reports of the gun world.
 
Gun Rags, like all rags... make money on advertising. To pump the advertising dollars they rake in, they have to pump the circulation. This is why Maxim and Stuff gave away 2 year subs for anyone who wanted them...
(this was a few years ago)
 
Dave Workman, so who are you and who do you write for? You do sound like a very narrow minded fellow. Thats what I am talking about if you don't like what I write you are off base on firearms. A real constructive writer would ask question not give childish little answers. Fill me in I have never heard of you?:confused:
 
Hi, Ranger:

If you would, allow me to give a bit of perspective and some personal knowledge.

I began writing and photographing for outdoor magazines in 1964. I've written for many of the top gun magazines as well as served as editor for a few of them. I've written thousands of articles and purchased thousands more.

Dave Workman is one of the finest writers in the business -- period. His work in The New Gun Week has broken ground time and time again. He's a reporter as well as a writer. That is an important distinction.

I've said it on the air, and I believe it: If Dave Workman say something is so, I take that to bank.

Now, gun magazines . . .

When I started in the business, there were very few outdoor and even fewer gun magazines. The NRA had one -- the American Rifleman. There was Guns & Ammo. Not much else.

Today, there are dozens of gun mags and hundreds of outdoor magazines. They all compete for the same advertising dollars.

And, now they also have to compete with the 100+ television shows, thousands of web sites hawking banner ads, radio shows, and even every Friends of the NRA and DU banquet which wants donations.

Readership of all print is down. Just a fact. Ask the NY Times, etc.

The business model for most magazines is to basically give away the subs, and then to sell the circulation to the advertisers.

Is the quality of writing down? I think so. There was a time when the line between editorial and advertising was pretty solid. Tom Paugh, my editor at Sports Afield, would fire a writer if he/she showed the copy to an advertiser.

Now, it's common for an advertising package to include editorial as well as ads.

I don't like it, but that's what we have.

Would anyone be willing to pay $40 a year for a subscription? Hardly. Ask Gun Tests. Very low numbers.

I'm glad I don't own a magazine. You'll note that some of the magazines now have television components (Guns & Ammo, American Rifleman, etc.), and all of them have web components to the ad package.

It's tough out there for magazines, and the first concern is to get the ad dollars.

Having said that, there is a lot of good writing, and there are good magazines. You just have to hunt around and find the ones which work for you.

It's different from what it was 10, 20, 30 and 40 years ago. And it'll be different in 10 years.
 
"Ranger 40" sounds off:
Dave Workman, so who are you and who do you write for? You do sound like a very narrow minded fellow. Thats what I am talking about if you don't like what I write you are off base on firearms. A real constructive writer would ask question not give childish little answers. Fill me in I have never heard of you?
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Sigh. Here we have a self-admission that someone who clearly hasn't read any gun magazines in the past decade or so comes along to criticize these magazines and their writers. In, one might note, a pointedly snotty matter.

Ranger, too bad you're not local (to us WA folks) -- you'd know of the hard work Dave puts in on behalf of gunowners and shooters. Kindly don't find it so easy to make negative remarks about someone you've never heard of ...

Sheesh, I've noticed that in the past couple of years even Gun World's Jan Libourel making (albeit mild) critical remarks of some pistols he's reviewed. American Handgunner and Guns seem to consistently find things to criticize in firearms its writers review, and it's worth noting that their writers do actually seem to put a substantial number of rounds downrange when evaluating guns.

The gun rags may be hurtin' some, as many have noted the entire print media industry is, but I'll still pay for some of 'em -- I like the pictures (and there are still a few writers out there with something worthwhile to say, even if it's not said in every issue).
 
I think we are all more sensitive to the fact that Commercial Gun magazines are simply platforms for advertising products. Articles are simply infomercials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomercial Shill gunwriters cannot be critical of any product given them. If they were to do so the product company would withhold advertising dollars. The overall article must create a buying impulse Also, writers always want to be in the first to proclaim a new firearm. That will only happen if they praise each and every firearm put in their hands to the high heavens.

Just this month in Handloader, was an article by Brian Pierce about handloading the 45/70. And he used a Marlin, and he “just happened” to have a hunting trip to Africa which he shot all sorts of African game with Marlin lever actions. Unless gunwriters just happen to be billionaires, that trip, and that article was an infomercial paid for by Marlin. I just happen to notice that some other magazines on the rack this month have Marlin lever action articles. One had John Taffin shooting Marlins. Coincidence? I doubt it. I believe Marlin put together a coordinated plan to saturate the market with information articles on Marlins. Get the buzz up. I believe every picture of these guys next to some dead animal, proudly displaying the newest wonderstick, that trip and that article was paid advertising for the Wonderstick Corporation.

This month’s American Handgunner has a very long article on SOG knives. In my opinion, the whole thing was an infomercial.

As for articles being same ole, same ole, well many are. Commercial magazines are aware that the subscription lifetime of the average reader is about three years. So, every three years you are going to read the same neophyte information that they put out three years ago.

The funny thing to me is that people don’t like to read negative articles on guns. Gun Tests will slam firearms. But many of the people here dislike Gun Tests. And I think it is because folks want to read positive reviews of guns the own, or guns they plan to own.
 
I don't care for Gun Test for 1 reason: As a paid subscriber they Still want to have me pay (near the price of a subscription) to access an archieved article on their web sight.

Sorry, that doesn't appeal to me. If I'm giving you money, give me all the goods.
 
Thanks Tom nice to hear from you enjoy your show.:) As far as not reading any Mags in the past ten years. Well I have been getting G&A for 40 years and have been an Endowment Member of the NRA for a very long time . Bob Mileck was a good friend of mine when he was at Shooting Times and later G&A. I knew Neal Knox when were both just out of college. Neal was working for a Gun Week back in Ohio. That would have been about 63'.
So I don't need some "Green Horn" California transplant up in Left Wing Washington tellin me how to judge any thing.:fire:
 
I had not thought of Bob Melick in a while. What a fun guy he was. I remember him getting that little truck of his stuck in the slick, clay, gumbo in Wyoming on a prairie dog shoot. What a mess!

Every time I hear anything about Thermopolis, I think of Mileck. He was the real deal.

I can assure you that Dave Workman is also the real deal.

Neal would be proud of his gun rights journalism.
 
If I find something I don't like about a gun, I say so. If there's something that didn't work right, I say that, too, and explain what I think the problem is.
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Funny how the problems never show up until the product hits the market.

Sorry but as much as you protest otherwise, the publisher and editors can't be unbiased when you take money from advertisers of products you review.

I've seen too many "great" reviews on products that are nothing more than crap when the average Joe gets a hold of it.

Paper is a dead form of communication. May it rest in peace.
 
It's tough to compete with the internet. One interesting comparison is between the article on 91/30 snipers that appeared in Rifle a few years back with the online resources for Mosin-Nagants. The article, which is supposedly more reliable because it's in a glossy mag with an editorial staff, skipped a great deal and got other facts wrong. I can't blame the writer, who had little interest in the rifle and little knowledge about it. He had to get something together in short order. It's not possible to compete with knuckleheads who spend every free hour trading and shooting the things then post at length about it on line.

Every firearm review I do involves going to the range, pulling the trigger umpteen times, running rounds over a chronograph, taking the gun apart, putting it back together, seeing how it runs and trying to identify the problem if it doesn't.
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I have no doubt that's true. But how can such a review compete with the experiences of hundreds of people who fire a thousand times as many rounds through the same model? I found out about a problem with, for example, the frame of a little 3032, from reports on the forums. It only took a few minutes searching.

Or how can a writeup on Savage 99's possible give me the resources I can get over on 24 Hour Campfire with all the rat collectors?

I get the sense that most of the writers and staff on the mags know about the internet, but pay little attention to it and kind of wish it would go away ;-)

an article by Ayoob
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Yeah, Ayoob. Controversial, but never one to mince words. He's not really representative of the problems we're talking about. I don't think there's any doubt that the quality of the glossy mags isn't what it was. I know that upsets some people in the business, but it's very hard to read an article by Skeeter or Elmer and not come to that conclusion. I think the mags are going to have to find a new direction in the decade to come, but if I could tell you what that direction was going to be I'd be making a lot more money! As Tom notes, all print media has question marks over it now. What *is* their purpose now? What should it be?
 
I have not chimed in yet, so here is my worthless opinion.

Are the print mags in trouble? I HOPE so.

Why? As several here have already stated, they are out of touch with a good protion of their readership. They are out of date, and in most cases with the exception of product reviews they are late in getting info out to the populace.

I am tired as he!! of seeing the same old recycled articles from the same old tired writers. Kokalis being one of them. He was good back in the day, but now that his stuff is being ghost writen you can really tell the difference. His same articles show up in multiple magazines fairly often, as well as the other well know SGN writer David Fortier.

I am also tired of seeing the adds for all the crazy non-gun related stuff. If you have to sink to those levels of advertising, please just let it go.

I am waiting for someone to do a really good online gun mag that takes articles from people who use the products in the field, or really go out and give it a try and write a fair review about the product (and we all know that there are PLENTY of writers who wont say anything bad about a product because they get to keep it). Online is the way of the future, and if you want to save the article all you have to do is click save... and not have to live with the crap adds and junk.
 
feedthehogs said:
Funny how the problems never show up until the product hits the market.

Sorry but as much as you protest otherwise, the publisher and editors can't be unbiased when you take money from advertisers of products you review.

I've seen too many "great" reviews on products that are nothing more than crap when the average Joe gets a hold of it.
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Personal experience has shown there's merit in the above - several years ago, I bought a Kahr P9, a pistol hyped by ALL the gun rags. And what a troublesome little pistol that was . . . and a good number of other folks writing in on-line forums also had problems . . . we were all unwitting beta-testers. (After several unsuccessful attempts to make the gun work, Kahr replaced it; I traded the unfired replacement for a Glock 26, which though it isn't as compact, actually has the virtue of working.) Yet NONE of the gun rags hinted at trouble . . .

Actually, my turning point on some of the gun rags happened well over a decade ago, when a much-hyped cover story promised to reveal which products were the best at preventing rust on one's guns.

They listed an extensive array of solvents, oils, and greases, and went into great detail on their testing methods, preparation of samples, etc.

When it came time to reveal which products were best, did they name names? HECK NO! The gun rag just printed a general conclusion, that when it came to preventing rust, the greases were generally better than the oils, and in turn the oils were better than the solvents.

Pages and pages of test protocols, descriptions of the products they tested . . . and they come up with THIS?

Bah. Worthless scrap of paper.
 
Ranger40 wrote:
So I don't need some "Green Horn" California transplant up in Left Wing Washington tellin me how to judge any thing.
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That's the last insult I'm going to take off of you, whoever you are.. For the record, I'm fourth generation Washington state, I'm an award-winning outdoor writer and editorial columnist, plus:
Senior Editor, Gun Week
Handguns Columnist, Gun Digest the Magazine
Guns & Shooting editor, Fishing & Hunting News (where I spent 21 years, 14 of them as Washington editor, part of them as Alaska editor to boot, and some as senior staff editor before taking over as managing editor of their Hunter Education Instructor magazine)
Author of a book on Washington state gun laws and self-defense laws, Author of three other published books and one currently in the production stage with Alan Gottlieb.

and I get published frequently in Gun World, annually in the Gun Digest annual, and my byline has appeared in scores of newspapers.

In 2005, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms named me 'Journalist of the Year'

I also own and operate D&D Gunleather, so I know a bit about packing handguns for serious business.

Neal Knox was a friend of mine, too. We served together on the NRA Board for several years. So was Jeff Cooper. I wrote both of their obits in Gun Week, and it was among the toughest jobs I ever had to do.

A lot of those guys whom you seem to think write nothing but fibs are friends of mine, and I've seen them shoot, I know what goes into their field research and writing; they don't make up that stuff.

And I don't hide behind some internet handle and toss insults around gun forums, I sign posts with my name.

Many thanks to Old Dog and Gresham for trying to set the record straight.
 
Actually, my turning point on some of the gun rags happened well over a decade ago, when a much-hyped cover story promised to reveal which products were the best at preventing rust on one's guns
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.

That rag was Guns and Ammo. I remember that article. I believe the reason they did not post any results was because some products would have done better, and others worse. And that might have gotten an advertizer unhappy.

That really started my loathing of commerical gun magazines and shill gunwriters. It was so apparent, infomericals in print.
 
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As long as there's a market...

The gun magazines will continue as long as people continue subscribing.
As Tom pointed out, there are many more magazines with much more specialization - that is a trend that has been growing for thirty years or more.
There have always been complaints about articles being rehashed and writers kowtowing to advertisers - it just goes with the territory and it's the gun writer's biggest challenge.
When a writer or a magazine leans too far in the direction of an advertiser without labeling the puff piece as an advertisement, they lose credibility and that will cause them to lose readers.
Guys like Dave Workman and Tom Gresham work hard every day to maintain the integrity of the gun media - not just print media, but radio, television, and the internet too.
Like Tom, I grew up the son of a gun-writer and I can tell you that all of the complaints on this thread are just rehashes of the same old complaints that people have been making for years...
Gun magazines serve some important purposes, but they're not for everyone. The proliferation of magazines tends to spread the quality writing thin and brings down the overall quality of all of the publications. Still, every now and then, the stars will align and you'll get a combination like Neal Knox, Jim Carmichael, Ken Waters, and the apprentice - Rick Jamison. When that happens, you've really got something worth subscribing to - but then I'm probably a little biased.
 
The "problem" (and the benefit) of online forums is lack of vetting. This is a problem because you get a flood of "armchair shooters" who post about stuff they really don't know from personal experience, making a very poor signal-to-noise ratio. But it's also a benefit because it gives the amateur, but true, expert a low-cost outlet to spread good information.

People seeking information, be it online or in print, want an expert source. On the internet, it's hard to tell. In print, at least you know the publisher thought the writer knew enough not to fatally embarass the magazine. There are web sites that command respect because of their reputation for posting accurate and cutting-edge information-- such as 6mmBR.com.

If you want the "new media" to sink dead-tree media, find a way for authors to get reliably paid per article per year in site advertising revenue, and help to give the sites that host the articles the "pull" required to get items for those reviews.
 
Jeff: You make a good point. When there were three or four gun magazines, and the Big Three (OL, F&S and SA), gun writers had to be GOOD to break in to the very limited market.

When there are 30 gun magazines and 150 outdoor magazines, they have to reach farther afield to get writers.

There may be just as many talented writers now, but they are spread over a much wider field.

When Neal edited Handloader and Rifle magazines, he was able to put together a great lineup of writers. It helped that your father was not only a talented writer and editor, but he was a national champion benchrest shooter, and he was accomplished at many shooting diciplines.

Serving as editor of those magazines was one of the more fun things I've done. My goal was to simply not screw up what Neal had built.

The dilution of magazines also makes it nearly impossible to build the "stars" of writing we had 30 to 50 years ago. No more will you have the O'Connor versus Keith debates. Remember, few readers under 40 have ever read anything by either of those writers.

In 1950 Corey Ford could get $2,000 to $3,000 for a magazine article in an outdoor magazine. For that, he sold one-time rights, and could reuse the article in books, etc. Today, you get $500, and the magazine buys all rights "in the known and unknown universe." (No, I'm not kidding about that phrase.) The magazine reruns the article in special issues and on the web sites, and the writer gets nothing.

Sell an article to a travel magazine, and you can get five to ten times that amount.

It's a wonder anyone wants to be a gun writer.
 
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