Sugar,
Much too ambitious & specialized for a general-interest gun mag.
Look at the time & expense involved in those.
An on-staff writer (salaried employee, in other words) makes the same salary all year long whether he writes 12 articles or 20. His expenses in doing a given project/article are paid by the publisher. He has sufficient time, within that salaried context, to take enough of it to do what the editor & publisher are willing to let him do (as in pay for). The expenses are typically agreed on up front.
The editor & the writer know what the approximate cost will be in terms of time & expenses, and if the editor thinks the end result, the article, will fit the overall magazine "theme" & be of sufficient interest to a segment of its readership to be worth the cost, the article's green-lighted.
AND- such expenses have to fall within the budget for the issue that article will appear in. Editors do not have unlimited funds to spend on content for any given issue.
If it takes a week, two weeks, or three weeks, the writer's drawing a paycheck all along, and his expenses are covered, so he can do that.
Contrast that with the freelancer (which the majority of us are).
As mentioned before, I get the same set fee for a one week, two week, or three week article. I can usually do a standard piece in a week. If I do a three week article, I lose out on the revenue from two other articles I could have been producing in that same time-frame.
If I do a long & involved piece, when the eventual check for it that may take anywhere from one month to six months to arrive is divided by the hours put into it, I can average out to four or five dollars an hour for my efforts, and that just doesn't pay the bills at my house. And, that'd be on top of the revenue loss caused by tying up all that time on one article when I could be doing three instead.
My expenses are typically not paid by the editor who buys the piece, and have to come out of the set fee check.
On occasion, I can get reimbursed for minor expenses, with emphasis on the "minor".
Only once in 22 years has a publisher covered travel expenses for an out-of-state event for me. It does happen for freelancers, but rarely.
The prevaling attitude is that we're on our own for such things.
Between those two factors, the set fees & the non-covered expenses, most freelancers simply can't afford to travel to faraway events. Travel, hotel, and eating expenses add up quick, and eat up any projected return revenue even quicker. Some events require their own costs to attend, further killing off any profit.
In many cases, if not most, where you see a freelancer covering a specialized event, or doing a long & involved article, it's only because he has a deep personal interest in the event or subject, and he's willing to take the loss on the subsequent article.
I used to cover one particular out of state CAS regional event for one specialized interest magazine. I enjoyed it, I felt the readers did too, and the overall expenses involved were at least double what I got paid for covering it.
A freelancer doing the magazines as a job & not as a hobby can't do too many of those.
Even for a staffer, money is not endless & an editor has to believe that sending him out to cover something that involves quite a bit of expense is worth it, within context, space, and budgetary juggling.
Olympic guns, long & involved reloading projects, multiple gun comparisons, in-depth equipment comparisons, and extended coverage of ANY event are both limited interest propositions and money drains that are not recoupable for the average freelancer.
I've done extensive handloading development articles, mostly for a single gun, and lost my shirt on 'em. I did one extensive project involving working up a load that worked well in a revolver & a levergun. Lost TWO shirts on that one in time spent & other-article revenue lost alone, not to mention the cost of materials used, but I thought readers might be interested.
I don't do many of those anymore, not cost effective, as you can imagine.
The things you're asking for fall more within the province of the special interest titles, and you should be able to find a good part of it among them.
There are very competent & knowledgeable guys who are willing to do such articles simply because they enjoy the processes & do so as either a hobby or figuring "might as well get paid a little for something I'm gonna do anyway".
In my case, crass & mercenary as it may sound to you, it's a job, and even there, in an average 30-submission year, it only makes up about half my income. If I didn't have other income sources, I couldn't afford to do it just for fun.
Freelancers do not get rich writing for the gunmags.
I've said repeatedly that the mainstream gun magazines are a total balancing act, and that's in several different areas.
They don't have unlimited funds to spend on what they perceive as fringe interests (although you may see an occasional fringe piece), they don't have unlimited funds to spend on any one single magazine issue, and writers who aren't just in it for the free beer & groupies are very much subject to space and money restrictions in producing a given article.
I see the occasional gun forum post asking "Why can't you take Brand X AR-15 and Brand Y AR-15 to a two-week carbine class six states over & compare how they do?" Well....That can be quite expensive. Even if the guns are loaners (that evil "free gun" thing again
) and the ammo's provided by the makers (yep- free), and the class is comped for the article (free again), there's still the travel expenses in getting there, plus lodging & eating expenses. And, those two weeks are tied up solely in on-site activities, not counting the write-up time once back home.
(This is, by the way, a clear example of the necessity of "free" stuff. Buying the two ARs, buying the ammo, and paying for the class would be so upside down in the time/expense/paycheck equation it'd be scary.)
Same basic idea applies to any Alaskan or African hunting article, although some lodging is comped and sometimes travel expenses may be covered by a particular gun company.
(We also know how that offends some people, we see enough of the "biased" & "canned hunt" comments.
)
You DO see this type of article here & there. But, again- an editor has to decide if it's worth it for a staffer or not, and a freelancer generally can't expect to make any money on it, so it becomes a matter of the freelancer doing it for the experience or the enjoyment, and as a not-for-profit endeavor.
And, as stated above, if it's a job, just can't do too many of those.
As far as any coverage of Olympic events goes, much expense for a very limited interest result.
Denis
