It's a sad situation, Rifle and Handloader used to be the best of the gun rags. under Dave Wolfe as I recall.
There's no hope for a free-lance writer in today's market. Stables of tame contract writers tell it like the advertiser wants it to be, and most of the 'editorial content' is un-retouched advertising art and copy straight from the industry's flacks.
You really have to sift to find a few nuggets of good information, even in the Rifleman, now. A perfect example is the most recent 'Law Enforcement' issue. Now what is THAT all about??
I have stacks and stacks of back issues of Guns, G&A, Shooting Times, Handloader and Rifle. (My Rifleman copies have always been 'redistributed' in an effort to get the word out to the unconvinced.) It's easy to see that as the great old field writers died off, no new people were brought up to replace them, and staff writers with questionable credentials and big axes to grind were brought on board.
The Web is the place to go now for information. It's raw, sometimes, and you have to accept or reject some of it based on your own experience and common sense, but that's much better than being force-fed sewage by a bunch of pretty boys in suits.
There's no hope for a free-lance writer in today's market. Stables of tame contract writers tell it like the advertiser wants it to be, and most of the 'editorial content' is un-retouched advertising art and copy straight from the industry's flacks.
You really have to sift to find a few nuggets of good information, even in the Rifleman, now. A perfect example is the most recent 'Law Enforcement' issue. Now what is THAT all about??
I have stacks and stacks of back issues of Guns, G&A, Shooting Times, Handloader and Rifle. (My Rifleman copies have always been 'redistributed' in an effort to get the word out to the unconvinced.) It's easy to see that as the great old field writers died off, no new people were brought up to replace them, and staff writers with questionable credentials and big axes to grind were brought on board.
The Web is the place to go now for information. It's raw, sometimes, and you have to accept or reject some of it based on your own experience and common sense, but that's much better than being force-fed sewage by a bunch of pretty boys in suits.
