Originally posted by CMcDermott:
From the 20's through into the 60's, being Gun Editor at Outdoor Life was THE job that said you were the best, most knowledgeable gun writer around. Keith wanted it very much, and felt that his decades of guiding and writing made him by far the best candidate, in spite of his lack of education and poor grammar. When they gave the job to O'Connor, a college English professor who was by comparison a fairly new part time writer and not very experienced hunter; Keith was EXTREMELY upset and never forgave O'Connor.
I think this is correct. But Jack had far superior communications skills and a gentleman's slant on hunting that caused even journalists to admit that he was the dean of gun writers. I think he was the ONLY gun writer to ever merit an obituary in the mainstream press!
Let me tell you a little secret that I learned while writing a gun column for a big city newspaper. Even the Outdoor Editor, to whom I sold my work, sneered at "gun writers" and clearly held them in contempt. He had been a football writer, tagged for the Outdoor job for some reason.
Well, one day, Elmer Keith came to town. Made a speech one night at a major hotel and shot for us with a new .44 Magnum on the Winchester range the next day. The Outdoor Editor couldn't be bothered to go cover him, and sent me and my (then) wife. We enjoyed it enormously.
But at the range, a TV station had sent a young black reporter, who had no idea at all who Keith was, or why he should be on TV. Hearing Elmer speak about hunting with a revolver, he expressed amazement that anyone would hunt with a weapon that this fellow knew only from its high crime use in the big city areas of the country. He was in a state of cultural disbelief.
I tried to fill him in on who Elmer was and his accomplishments, but he was lukewarm. I think he shot some footage, but don't recall that it made the evening news. Keith's visit did get a nice article on the Outdoors page of the leading newspaper...written by me. No one else there gave a damn!
The Outdoor Editor was baffled that I should be able to recite Elmer's famed handload for the .44 Magnum. Why would anyone need or want to remember something like that?! That editor occasionally went duck hunting with a shotgun. That was about the extent of his involvement with firearms. I'll leave it to you to guess how much his peers thought about guns in anything but a crime sense...
Now, Outdoor Life was run by a competent professional editor. The man would have had nightmares correcting Elmer's awful prose. Even his personal letters looked like something typed by a child not doing well in English class.
Faced with that choice, Jack was the hands-down winner to be the prestigious shooting editor of a magazine that wanted to be taken seriously, writing for an editor who needed to be able to respect his scribes for their journalism skill. I think Bill Rae and Jack O'Connor clicked together much better than any other applicants for the job, and Jack was writing then about desert game in the SW, a novel twist. He wrote well, had a wry sense of humor, and eventually, became THE gun writer for hunting rifle buffs. He also dealt very well with shotguns. OL was a hunter's magazine. It didn't have much need for handgun coverage.Elmer's material went better in the American Rifleman, which drew more hardcore gun nuts, and later, he did well at Guns, mainly because of his fame from AR and his contributions to the industry.
Bob Petersen liked him, admired him for his very real talents, and hired him at a good rate for the work. And he took care of him, even after he had his stroke and was unable to write.
I think Petersen was being humane, but also harbored a hope that Keith would recover and be able to write again. I'm sure that Petersen knew that Elmer's name sold magazines to real gun buff buyers.
But at Outdoor Life or at Gun Digest, Elmer would have been out of place as a senior editor. He simply never cared to learn good writing and editing skills. And that is as important as having good background knowledge of the subject.
One reason why many conventional sportswriters have ridiculed gun writers is that they tend to be "peacocks" with limited literary skills. There are exceptions, like John Wootters. He knew his way around a typewriter (and a camera!)as well as he knew his facts. He also had a lot of practical experience. Bill Jordan once told me that Wootters was a true wordsmith, while he (Jordan) was just a shooter who wrote some on the side. (He was too modest, unusual in a gun writer.
)
Look at today's gun writers. Most are chest-beaters who open many paragraphs with personal pronouns. This is in conflict with what journalism schools teach: the use of the impersonal approach to writing. Recall, they are training reporters and editors, not personal account Johnnies. (Yes, the writer in a gun or hunting magazine does need to be able to relate his personal experiences, to establish his expertise. But that goes over the heads of his more "elite" journalism peers. Most gunnies are vain, somewhat rustic men, often looking for freebies and ad dollars as much as they seek to inform. I understand that one well known shotgun writer was so upset with how he shot with a borrowed gun that he wrapped it around a tree when he was embarrassed that he didn't shoot it well. How would that look to a "professional" journalist?
Some gun writers might say in response, How does it look to the public to slant the news along political lines, or to have affairs with the people whose activities you're covering in, say, Iraq? (Yes, I mean a certain CBS newsbabe whose name you've heard many times.)
Regardless of which is worse, hokey good ol' boyism on one hand, or deliberately manipulating the news to favor a particular candidate or political view? I guarantee you, those in the latter camp disregard the sty in their eye to ridicule the gun writers!
Jack O'Connor at least had been a college prof and had gotten an article or two in "slick" mainstream journals, sometimes to the jealousy of his teaching peers. He founded the Journalism program at his AZ university. He was a socialite of sorts, who hunted with royalty in exotic places. He was the easy choice to be at Outdoor Life. And he could answer reader mail without making his publisher look like a yokel. I'm sure that was an important consideration in selecting him as Outdoor Life's longtime gun editor and in him doing so well at, "Petersen's Hunting" after he retired from OL. His books were literate and droll, often wry. It's easy to see why he was popular across the whole spectrum of those who read gun and hunting magazines.
Askins and Keith had their reasons to resent him, but I think OL made the right choice for that position. This does NOT mean that Keith and Askins, Jr. weren't also great gun writers. But some of their personal qualities (I'm truly trying to be delicate here) did not lend them to that particular job. Askins, at least, could spell, and had a literary style that was full of vitamins. I actually enjoyed his stories, a lot.
I know why he embarrassed some editors later in his career, but he was okay, if a little pompous, in my very limited dealings with him.
By the way, some gun writers have tipped the bottle to their lips a little too often. I won't name any names, but O'Connor held his liquor better than some. That would also have been a consideration for that job, where he had to represent OL at trade and other functions.
T-Star
