Dean,
"Don't know when you were in and out of there, Mike, but the very first thing that "Red" Bell did when he was brought in from his 33 years with Petersen's, was re-make The American Rifleman in G&A's image, from the "look" of the book to the "ultra-advertser-friendly" content, the latter being a long-time Petersen's hallmark!"
Gee, that sounds vaguely familiar...
I was there from October 9, 1990, to April 20, 1994.
I was on Bell's staff for approximately 6 months before about 1/3rd of the Publications Staff was laid off.
Red Bell and the board cabal that hired him did more damage to American Rifleman magazine than any other single idividual ever could have hoped to do.
The faction on the board at that time (including the most useless EVP NRA has ever had) that forced his hiring wanted a G&A clone for any number of reasons long before Bell and Petersen's parted company under a cloud.
George Martin, Bill Parkerson and Tom Fulgham dragged their feet for as long as they could.
When Martin was forced out, er... excuse me, moved laterally, the writing on the wall became clear, and Parkerson bailed to go to ILA. He apparently didn't want to be around for the bloodbath that was to come. Can't blame him. At that point he had had 25 years on Rifleman and was considered to be the next director of NRA Publications and Publisher of the magazines.
Sorry, Bill. Thanks for the years of service, you
ing dinosaur, get the hell out.
Ron Keysor, Bob Hunnicutt, and Pete Dickey were all in line for the job of editor of the magazine and yet it becamse quickly apparent that it was going to be someone from the outside who would hold BOTH positions (good way to save money, I guess).
I still remember the warnings I got from a number of respected freelancers and members of the G&A staff who had worked with "good old Red." Not exactly complimentary assessments of the new boss.
Around the same time LaPierre had the "initiative" going to make the magazines self-sustaining based on their own advertising revenue, and a possible move to put Rifleman and the other NRA magazines on the newsstand.
Only problem was, with ad rates running approximate HALF of what they were for other magazines in the industry, the math isn't hard to figure out.
You can't support a 4-C 120-page book when you're charging $25,000 per page and everyone else in the industry is charging $50,000 a page and barely breaking even. The magazines had been a line item in the general budget for a long time, and apparently that rankled some people for some reason. (Interestingly enough, many of the same people were responsible for the final break between the Olympic Shooting Team and NRA.)
Bell came in, alienated the entire staff, cut 1/3rd, and lost Pete Dickey to retirement (he had no intention of doing so, until), had Ron Keysor leave for ILA because he hated working for Bell so much, had Bob Hunnicutt bail to go to work for Crosby for awhile just to get away from the BS that was going on at NRA, etc.
That done, more money needed to be saved, so usher in the age of a return to black and white photography dominating in the magazine for about a year, 10 issues a year instead of 12, a reduction of the book by almost 1/3rd, and, my favorite change of all? A virtual deemphasis on firearms content to allow Marion Hammer and other board members space for political self-agrandizement articles.
Even after all that, "good old Red, silt of the earth," still needed to save money, so when the publications groups started hiring people back to replace the people who had either been laid off or quit in disgust, guess what happened then? Starting salaries were cut for most positions, sometimes by as much as 1/3rd.
I started in October 1990 as Associate Editor for $27,000 a year. When an Associate Editor was finally rehired around 1997 or 1998, I heard through the grapevine that the starting salary was barely over $20,000.
Yep, a staff of youngsters, without experience.
Certainly a wonderful legacy for NRA and the magazines.
Now, though, those who were able to hold on through those years are in charge, and interestingly enough, they're helping bring Rifleman and Hunter back to something of the look that the magazines had before the G&Aization. Not the whole way, and to be perfectly honest, there are somethings that are very good about the old G&A style (but the last thing that's needed is a bunch of cookie cutter magazines that look exactly the same).
Mark Keefe and John Zent are people I worked with in the pre-Bell times at Rifleman. Scott Mayer, too, as well as the deputy director of Publications, Loureds Fleckenstine (sp?). Never could spell her name.
Probably most importantly, though, to a balancing of the image is the fact that Harry Jaecks is still art director. How he managed to tough it out through the Bell disaster is completely beyond me.
Ouch!
