posted on October 24, 2009 02:39
Back when we were still communicating with wet blankets over a wood fire at the tops of hills, I had a journalism professor that said, writers block is akin to a surgeon having cutting block. If you are trained to write, you simply write. Hell, that makes this column, when I have no idea of what I’m about to write about, a piece of cake, or maybe I’ll just do surgery on myself.
I’ve seen the crossbow movement come a long, long way in the 20-years I’ve been pushing, check that (that’s writer slang for oops), in the 20 years I’ve been helping others decide that they should push for expanding crossbow hunting opportunity. I’ve seen people like the publisher of this magazine come to my camp with a chip on his shoulder about including crossbows in the same breath as long, recurve or compound bows. And I’ve knocked that chip off – actually I didn’t. I just handed them a crossbow and said, here, go hunt with it for three or so days and make up you own mind about what it is and what it isn’t – instead of believing the truth’s published by the “Anti-Crossbow Committee” of the Professional Bowhunters Society. That one always got me, too. I’ve hunted with a bow and arrow set for many decades but nobody ever offered me a job as a “professional bowhunter.”
In fact, I take offense in the modern communications forum that insists because someone is on our TV in brilliant HD – in a time slot that their production company purchased – is self-proclaimed a professional hunter. What the hell does that mean anyway? It sounds illegal to me. Wasn’t it the professional hunters that wiped out the passenger pigeon and almost the American bison? There hasn’t been a rewarding television show about the outdoors since the “American Sportsman” with Kurt Gowdy. When another producer can make a show that demands the hunter to watch, and actually relates fact – not, you can only kill this if you use this, and then change that next year when the sponsor change -- and put the responsibility on the network sell the ads will I start thumping the educational value of TV.
There are TV producers that have full and faithful intention of serving the educational needs of their viewers, and many of them do a fantastic job while dealing with the constraints of having to buy time and pay for it with sponsor money. A long time ago when I was the editor of two regional (and successful at the time) outdoor magazines, I was approached by a producer to do a TV show. At the time I fought with my advertising sales staff on a regular basis about editorial purity – we don’t sell editorial, we sell our dedicated readership. I told that producer when outdoor TV came to that same standard I’d host a TV program with the magazine’s masthead.
I guess I was wrong, the two regional titles are long gone (but not because of my editorial stance – we had a new investor come in that new better), and today most of the hunting magazines set their editorial content by how much who is spending in advertising. We have prominent writers as spokespersons for this or that, or a pro staffer for this or that, even editors of publications doing the same thing. And because fewer and fewer hunters are looking for information in print – read that as at least a chance to glean some knowledge as opposed to the hype of killing a trophy every time the 30-minute show airs – more and more of those publications that truly try to express an editorial purpose are failing.
Daniel James Hendricks, your magazine has an editorial purpose – one that I hope it reaches with concerned industry support in the form of advertising. Never sell your editorial platform, to do so would only lead to a loss of credibility. Crossbows are archery equipment – Daniel Hendricks told me that the second year he hunted with me.
Note: I think perhaps the recent death of Walter Cronkite might have spawned this column. He was the last of a kind. During his nightly broadcast for CBS he reported the news, he didn’t tell you the news. I think many of today’s anchors, or special correspondents might be acting as pro-staffers for a political party or at least a stance somewhere left of center.