nally he stares at me in dramatic fashion (a couple others have accumulated around us), pauses, and says... tell me how you know what you are reading on the internet is even true... amd starts laughing.
I glance at my buddy and he has the.. get his azz look on his face. I look back dead in that old farts eyes... pause for dramatic effect and say... common sense (sarcastically). It doesn't matter if it's on paper or on a screen if you don't apply some common sense and look for multiple sources you don't have any thing.
Well, you didn't say what kind of magazine subscriptions the guy was hawking but what the guy was trying to explain to you is mostly true. There's a huge difference in print vs digital content, especially in magazine print that requires a paid subscription vs free internet content. I know of no magazine content that went under or was forced to go to digital content because they were printing untrue content. Contributors to subscription print 99% of the time have (had) their real names attributed in the page (usually at the top) and their reputation and financial livelihood depends (depended) on them writing as accurate as possible because their reputation was (is) at stake. Few people would continue to pay for a subscription if writers just made s*** up (rags like Mad magazine excepted)
You really think anyone would continue to pay for a Field and Stream type magazine subscription if the writers just made up hunting and fishing stories? No print magazine will survive long if their content is continually false. The internet tho, is much much more forgiving.
There are substantial costs involved in print magazines. That cost, for most of my life, was recouped by subscription revenues plus built in profit margin. Supplemented by advertising. It's these high costs that drove many traditional print mags and newspapers to web based venue.
On the web, almost anyone can get a cheap or even free hosting and be able to say or print whatever they want, true or not. If eventually, no one reads it, so what? They haven't really lost anything, which is not true with print. On top of that, almost all web forums involve usernames instead of real names so the writer's real world reputations aren't an issue.
I think it started downhill for the modern generations with talk radio of the 80s and early 90s. The Rush Limbaugh type programs, tho he certainly wasn't the only one. Yes, used his real name, but it was free for the listener. Magazines are not. He made his $$ from ad proceeds. He and the others of his era didn't really care whether everything he said was true or not, the ad $$ kept pouring in.
Same with a great # of today's youtube vids and social/political forums. Same with the other biig web platforms like X and FB. They can say anything, because they target specific demographics that don't have to pay anything to view it but they get a few fraction of a cent per/each view from advertisers and Google. And, they are forever. Nothing ever really disappears from the web. The worst that can happen to them is they get some nasty comments down below, but the influencer/creator can block all or any comments if they choose to. FB or X blocks them? They just reappear with a new username and profile (and IP)
Outdoor sportsmen/sportswomen are not going to stand for a bunch of bs in a paper print magazine subscription and their feedback is taken seriously by the editors and for reasons stated above, most of the contributions and written material is as accurate and without embellishment as possible. .
Internet contributors more often than not just don't care. The louder the argument gets the better they like it because that in of itself draws more views, thus more $$ and of course attention.
I used to have subscription to Texas Monthly. It was a good magazine but either because of rising costs or publisher greed, (both?) it became 90% ads and 10%content. It still has pretty good content, what little there is, but not worth flipping thru pages and pages of ads to get to or continue with the content.
