The Fly Fishing Magazine Industry is Dying...

[Longs for Cutts]

The spring issue of Fly Rod & Reel, the only print magazine I read regularly and to which the shop subscribes besides the FFF and TU publications, was the last. Greg Thomas, the editor, talks about it here.

Today, I got an email from a magazine to which I contribute one or two articles a year noting dramatically reduced pay rates, that they were cutting page counts in the magazine, etc. etc. I have not been paid for a story that appeared in the Fall 2016 issue, and I'm now starting to doubt I will be. I bet they don't last another year.

I don't really have much else to say except that this is a sad state of affairs..

[The Chronicler]

Not only is the print industry in trouble but the online industry [fly fishing magazine] are in trouble. First, no one reads anything. If they need specific information, say a fly pattern, they simply have to look it up on the Internet. If FAOL depended on subscriptions or advertisers I doubt that we would still be online.

[NJTroutbum]

It is trending down for certain. It is sad to see publishers drop.

[Prairieschooner]

The internet, while a wonderful vehicle for the distribution of information, is the devil when it comes to print media of any kind. There are still a few of us old f*rts who would rather hold a book in their hand than a kindle, but I hate to see what will happen when we're all gone.

Sadly, print magazines of most all genres have become not much more than advertising blurbs. The editor of a gun magazine I used to write for recently told me that he couldn't devote space to "human interest" pieces; the space was too valuable (read, "for advertising"). A few years ago I was interviewing for a position as the advertising manager for a start up sports-related magazine. I asked what their circulation was, and the owner said, "Magazines don't make money from subscriptions, they make it from advertising." When I asked who was going to pay to advertise in a magazine if nobody was reading it, I just got kind of a blank stare.

I hate the trend as much as anybody, but I don't see it changing.

[Gene]

People get there info the quickest and easiest way now, whichever suits them. I used to get every fly fishing publication there is, now I get none. Just about everything is a rehash of an old subject. I am sorry to see the demise, I have the first copy of Fly Fisherman, Rod and Reel before it was Fly Rod and Reel, probably others too. You see the same problems with today's news print, some of our oldest newspapers are struggling too.

Gene

[8wt]

I certainly miss the salt water mags. How many get thisisfly online?

[sagefisher]

Evolution.
We are witnessing the process even if it does take hundreds of years to complete. Back in the Middle Ages, about the only way people knew what was going on were from what the travelling merchants and the story tellers of the travelling fairs had to report.


Then someone came up with a printing press and that progressed into newspapers, magazines and books. Once people actually learned to read they could find out what was happening in the world within a reasonable time of the occurrence.


Along came the telegraph and we had almost instantaneous transmission of data so people could print it in newspapers for the populace to read.


Hang onto your seats, along came the radio. Wow, virtually instant transmissions of world events, including the War of the Worlds. Heck many people believed that because it was on the radio.


Newspapers actually started their slow demise when radio came out and then the TV was invented and that also kept the demise of newspapers going, plus magazines started faltering, but books kept going.


The next catalyst of course was the computer and the creation of the internet and WiFi. Not only were the majority of people not reading the newspapers anymore but the printed word became greatly at risk. Magazines started getting dropped like crazy and now the even books are becoming a dying form of entertainment. Kindle and the others like it have just about caused that industry to cease.


This all makes me wonder, just what does the future hold for us? What fantastic inventions will they come up with?


However, none of these things have stopped the feeling of casting a fly line, laying down the fly upon the water and seeing a fish come for the take. Sure we have better equipment now than they did going back hundreds of years, or thousands, but that same feeling of the cast and the take still lives on.


Larry ---sagefisher---