For unlike the manufacture of widgets, where more or less the widget remains unaltered day in day out, each issue of a publication is structurally quite different from the issue that went before. Pity the poor publisher. Say something amiss about an individual and a magazine can lose thousands, but in the enlightened days since the jackpot payouts to Elton John and Jefferey Archer, these are much more like to be a few thousands rather than hundreds of them. But say something amiss about a company or its products and the average trade publication may be staring down the end of a serious bill. And of course that is right and fair.
Trade magazines are in some way analogous with post-war Great Britain.
Its no wonder that, by and large, trade publications shy away from controversy and for most part stick to the simple fare of reporting on new products, moves in the trade and the rest of the more or less harmless business currency. The problem is that trade magazines are rarely more than a mirror for the industry they report upon. Wishy washy industry media betoken weak unoriginal industries. If there is no healthy debate it is probably because there are no ideas in circulation. Strangely, for all its many failings and its apparent ill health, the shooting industry has gossip a plenty.