What do you want out of life?

[davecutts]

I think it would help to remember several thing first 3/2 of US gdp is consumer spending, second the fire arms industry is not booming, and the profit margins are kind of small.  The questions pondered in this thread may go back to the "What's wrong with USPSA" thread, and the whole marketing the sport catch 22.  Yes Winchester may have grossed 218 million last year, but what where their costs?  We should look at how much money the manufactures make off competitive shooting, and I think after we do we would see that there would not be a whole lot of money to go around.  They (the manufactures) already spend money sponsoring major matches and a host of minor's with lots of prizes.  I would bet my next paycheck that if they could make more money hiring shooters (like Rob and Todd) to promote the sport they would.   The competitive shooting market is relatively small so in turn the money is tight at every business targeting us.  Think of how many golfers it takes to support the PGA (LPGA, senior pga, senior LPGA, etc) tour.  It's a multi-billion dollar industry.  Yes the PGA has the benefit of being around for a few more years than USPSA.  But you see what I mean one dollar spent has to equal x dollars of extra revenue.  In golf it might be 1 to 50 (times 1000 or some outrageous number) for USPSA sponsors it might be 1 to 3.  End result more shooters spending more money means more money to market products to shooters, i.e. why we buy magazines, and more money to sponsor shooters who bring more people into the sport.

Another way to look at this money for pro shooters thingy (at my most concise) is entrepreneurship.  Ralph Arredondo, or Beven Grams are two examples from this neck of the woods (so cal).  I've been told Ralph has a successful plastics business and does shooting products on the side, but he gets to shoot a lot no doubt because it's all a business expense for him.  Beven is Grams Engineering (and I don't know if that's all he does), but he sponsors a team and makes some money so he can shoot a lot (Beven's on the board and may be able to clear this up).  My point is these gentlemen have good ideas for products shooters might want to buy and they took the plunge, and the risks.  I would again be willing to bet my next paycheck that getting rich selling competitive shooting products is a long way off.

If magazines could sell the sport, sponsors could sell the products.  As evidenced by the popularity of the Biography channel, music magazines, and Oprah Americans love a human interest story as much as they love seeing sh%t blow up.

Wow that’s long.

[Flexmoney]

Real articles...not just reports and blurbs.

Example:

I bought a rag a while back...the cover promised info of the Steel Challenge match.  I was interested.  It ended up being a fairly short report.  It covered all the info pretty well, but didn't eat up and pages with an depth.

Same thing in another rag.  Big picture of the Glock 21 on the cover...scratch that...it is the cover.  Inside, not even two pages...and they were over half covered with graphics.

[TravisT]

(Edited by TravisT at 7:23 pm on June 11, 2002)

[38supPat]

I think TT is right, Gungames did hit on a good formula, but they drifted. We are all tired I'm sure of articles on 9mm vs. .45 vs. .40 .vs M1 Abrahms  Or Semi vs. revolver / wondernine vs. 1911. Or what "the best combat handgun is"

Gungames gave us an alternative that showed the "Sport" side of guns, and how much fun getting out to the matches is, what cool new stuff is avail. The personalities behind the scenes. It was a gamey magazine. When more IDPA and tactical stuff seeped in, it became just like every other magazine on the rack. (no offence to the IDPA types out there, but AH seem to dedicate itself more to the IDPA equipment race than anything else)

I agree that the personalities must be brought into it. There's a whole field of shooters out there that should be acknowledged. TT, Max, Julie, Lisa M., Tawn,  etc. that are all out there working hard, (most with a full time job to boot)

Pat

(Edited by Pat Harrison at 3:02 pm on Mar. 4, 2002)

[EricW]

Is there a particular reason why we can't implement a lot of this stuff in Front Sight? I just got the latest copy in yesterday, read it critically, and realized just how much I like it.  If there was just some more in-depth stuff on the shooters and it came out once a month, it would be near perfect.  Technically the articles in FS are better than anything else out there - not to say there isn't room for expansion, but frankly it's the best game in town.  

Why not improve on what we've got?  Is there a roadblock here?  Why can't FS be the defacto standard in gun magazines?  Why shouldn't we get prime real-estate in the news stand?  

E

(Edited by EricW at 2:19 pm on Mar. 4, 2002)

[bgary]

A random parallel...

One of my favorite sailing magazines is this little news-print monthly that comes out of San Francisco.  Why is it *so* much better than the glossies on the news-stand?  Because of (at least) two things.  One, they don't pull punches - they say what they think, and if they think that a race organizer (or something) did something stupid, they say so.  And two, they talk about *people* - not just the "names", but people I know, people I've raced against.  What they're up to, what new thing they're trying, etc.  So, it makes me feel like I am part of the "community" just by reading it.  (And, it also makes me feel that I better keep reading it, cuz you just never know when the boats *I'm* racing on might get mentioned ;-)

That might be a formula for improving FS, too - I know it has gotten better (at least I think it has) in the last 6 months or year, but... it can still improve.

Bruce

[EricW]

One of my all-time favorite magazines is Climbing.  The gear reviews were just hysterically funny sometimes.  On one review, the caption under the picture of a battery-fed drill read:  

"The new Bosch Bulldog Industrial Hammer Drill sends small animals running for their lives!"

Which was particularly funny at the time because there was a major stink going on with the National Park Service over the placing of bolted climbing anchors in parks and wilderness areas.  

E

[Detlef]

Bruce,

give us some specific examples that make you say FS has improved over the past 6 (or so) months.

--Detlef

[shred]

Hmm.. thread drift mode ON, but climbing magazines seem to be degenerating somewhat too.  More and more ads, less and less useful/non-rehash articles.  Same goes for Windsurfing magazine-- great photos, but after the tenth 'how to jibe' or 'Undiscovered Aruba!" article, it gets tiresome..

Maybe it's because after I've been obsessed with any given sport for a while, I'm pretty much 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt'.

Would gun magazines be any better if they ran a bunch of "how to use your sights"-type articles?   Or "This-compensator vs that-compensator"?  Sooner or later you've gotta get out there and <I>shoot</i> to appreciate the differences.

American Rifleman does OK with their article contents because they have a very broad topic area.

http://www.realguns.com is a perfect example of a no-holds-barred site, but can any publisher sustain that month-after-month, year after year?

ok, enough rambling..

[EricW]

Not really thread drift Shred.

I think what you're seeing is maturity in those sports.  Initially, everything is new, radical, and exciting then developments start to come more slowly.  The major gun rags have certainly matured, grown old, and fungi has started to grow on the subject matter.  

A magazine on competition shooting will be no different.  But, with virtually no one doing anything in that direction besides FS, the first few years would be exciting ones indeed.

E

[3quartertime]

I disagree that a mag focused on competitive shooting would grow stale after a year or two.

Like bgary,  I too am a sailor.  The sailing rags that i read never become mundane because I am always interested in bettering my skills.

There will always be new products to review.  There will always be a new great shooter to interview.  There will always be new stages that get designed.  With so much to cover in each issue how could it become trivial.

Front sight would be a great forum for all these ideas.  Is there a person that  works for uspsa that is involved with front site that posts here,  I would think there is someone.  I wouldn't find a problem with the yearly membership dues plus a mag subscription, if it were monthly and it was worth the extra money.

[davecutts]

I'm with 3quartertime on the extra subscription cost for an extra good Front Sight.  I kind of think it's like the NRA mags.  Yeah I get their First Freedom political pamphlet, but I also pay the extra 15 bucks to get American Rifleman.

[Robin Taylor]

Gentlemen,

Patrick Sweeney pointed me to this thread when the talk swung toward Front Sight magazine.

I took over the day-to-day functions of Front Sight a little over a year ago, working under Dave Thomas at USPSA.

I can't tell you how encouraged I am by your comments about Front Sight, and about Gungames (I wrote for them for years, recently under a penname).

I agree with several of the posters who pointed out that Front Sight can and should be the source for some of THE BEST competition shooting intel and articles going. I'm talking about stuff like Bennie Cooley's recent rifle piece, and Patrick Kelley's treatise on speed shotgun (who else would tell you a Benelli will puke on a .13 split? A Remington at .14?).

Front Sight comes with some built-in limitations, but it has immense potential in its niche.

What I could use your help with is in generating topics. I'm going to ask Patrick Sweeney to pick up on some of the ideas you've mentioned so far (Patrick and I were already on the holster idea), and I'll take the ball myself for some of the personality stuff.

I'm always looking for good ideas, especially if there's a willing writer to go with it.

Thank you for your time,

Robin Taylor

Assistant Editor

Front Sight magazine

robin@uspsa.org

[Tory Schmeiser]

I would love to see a gun rag (AH comes to mind)have a colum  with the focus on the new competative shooter. I mean start bare roots..discuss gun selection,for whatever the sport is, reloading info,training. And maybe even go so far as to kep it going till we see the writer attend his first match. One thing....no B.S. endorsement....I dont want to read about someone who gets a new full race gun given to them by a top smith so the smith gets some review time.

An honest, non-smoke blowing colum.

[j1b]

Robin

Thanks for joining the thread.

I've spent the last week to ten days spending a lot more time reading these forums and a lot less time typing in them. To me the answers lie right here - at BE.com

It appears to me that people want to know about TGO, about Todd and Jerry and Doug etc.  etc. They also want to know about new guys that are doing things. They also want to know about technique - how to do this, how to do that, why this, why that???

Maybe articles you could have would be "A day with Robbie" or "How JJ has become the fastest rising star in the USPSA" and supplement those articles with skills info "Todd Jarrett breaks down X classifier - and tells you how to do it!!!!" or "US Army Shooter Max Michell Jr. shed's the light on his win at Area x this year"

I've also read somewhere that the USPSA is considering a circuit (something I think I posted on this sight some time ago) What a great way to drive people into wanting to know what's going on. All of the sudden this years Champion doesn't get to win his (or her) title in a three day event. It takes months and months of consistent performance - and FS is there to tell everyone what the most recent news on the circuit is.

Anyhow - just my $.02.

[DogmaDog]

I hope this doesn't get lost in the sauce, but:

Along with many suggestions already posted, I'd like to see:

Courses of fire for different action shooting sports, with discussions about how to play them most effectively, or how they actually were played at major matches.

Real technical information...I don't know how to take apart my 1911 further than field stripping.  I could learn how to troubleshoot an extractor problem...write an article about it.  Also, get someone to write who had a high school level education in physics!  I cringe every time I see "energy" referred to when "momentum" is what's being described.

Same thing for reloading.  I currently don't do it (no time as a graduate student), and learning how is daunting, given all the variables...articles discussing, say, powder burn rate, or seating depth as considerations for reloading would be cool.

Maybe what I'd really like is more like a scholarly journal of shooting, rather than a "magazine"!

Semper Fi,

DogmaDog

[EricW]

Well put, Dog.

[JFD]

I would buy anything that covered most types of competition.  

Articles about shooters would be good.  Don't care who they are.  Detail anyone's match experience, from the top guys to some unknown new guy bringing his Ruger to shoot in Production.

The "reviews" where even malfunctions are glossed over (if even mentioned) aren't even read by me anymore.  I almost barfed after reading that the Hi-point carbine would make the perfect police weapon(same thing for the Crossfire).

I'd like to see reloading articles that do more than just advertise a new product.  I don't care if it's advanced or beginning topics since I may learn something at any level.

The one thing that will never make me buy a gun rag is a cover showing yet another minor variation of a godawful expensive 1911 clone even though I love 1911s and will almost never shoot anything else.

I'd like to see some stuff about bullet casting as well.