ORIGINAL: Curt Wells

I know better than to get involved here but I have to correct something. The ratio of ads to editorial (stories, columns and features) is 50/50 in Bowhunter Magazine and it's always been that way, at least as long as there were enough companies to buy ads. For every page of advertising sold there is a page of editorial. That's the way the business works.

Now, in our case one thing makes a noticeable difference. In what is called the editorial "well," those pages with the feature articles, you won't see any ads at all. We're one of the only, if not the only, magazine that does that. Consequently, it pushes ads to the other parts of the magazine, most commonly the front. That might make it seem like more ads per page but it's not. I specifically counted the last two issues and that ratio hasn't changed.

I'm just a field editor so I don't have control over content or anything else that goes in the magazine but those are the facts about advertising. I constantly see posters complain about it getting worse over the years but it hasn't. Fact is, no media, whether it's TV, radio, magazines or websites can survive without advertising and the truth is none of us would be the bowhunters we are today without advertising.