Thursday, May 10, 2007

WHO KNEW? Eastern Fly Fishing Mag plays dumb re. Donny Beaver

UPDATE!
We received plenty of responses on our piece yesterday "letters to other editors" wherein reader Steve Bacon sent a letter to John Shewey, Managing Editor of Eastern Fly Fishing questioning the propriety of featuring the Spring Ridge Club within the pages of the magazine. Here's Shewey's response:
Our intention with “Exposure” is always simply to present a spread of great photos. Certainly we had no idea of the issues surrounding the Spring Ridge Club—we simply received a query from a freelance photographer suggesting an Exposure piece on “Pennsylvania Spring Creeks.” Seemed like a good topic, photographed by a great photographer, so we accepted. The normal process is to have our art staff choose the photos and then ask the photographer to provide captions; obviously we made a mistake in using one of the captions to provide a website plug for the club—thanks to your email, we realize now that our policy in the future should be to not provide plugs for private businesses photographed in the Exposure section. In some cases, we do run feature and short articles about private fee fisheries and in all such cases we disclose the fact in the text. As I said, however, in the case of Exposure sections, our aim is simply to provide our readers with a spread of great photos, captioned appropriately. We’ll pay closer attention to those captions in the future!

Thanks for you input.

Regards,
John Shewey
Managing Editor

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5 Comments:

Blogger Smithhammer said...

Well, I guess that's something. We'll see if they follow through with it and hold themselves to a higher standard. The good thing is, that response can be thrown back at them if they don't.

But it also highlights a larger, disturbing trend in the mainstream mags - "trip reports" that are really nothing more than thinly-veiled advertising for particular outfitter. A recent photo essay in Gray's, on a luxury yacht/helicopter trip in Patagonia, that runs $20k a week comes to mind...

10:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Magazines and destinations/outfitters have always had a too-chummy relationship.

Similar to the ties between manufacturers and magazines, you just don't see anything negative, so how could you possibly trust the positives?

1:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Quote: "Certainly we had no idea of the issues surrounding the Spring Ridge Club" That response is hogwash. How can they claim no knowledge of an issue that has had alot of publicity in the East for quite awhile now. If that is the case then they should not be in the fly fishing publication business because they must have their heads in the sand.

8:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's the Gonzo defense - we didn't do anything wrong, even though I have no idea what we did.

12:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I picked up the first couple issues of this magazine when it first came out. Both had information within the text about the SRC and also stated the Little Juniata and Penns Creek were "Private Streams" without further explanation that SRC has "Private Access" to the Little Juniata and that Penns is only partly private. I emailed and called Easter Fly Fishing to inform them at that time... so they know exactly what they're doing. I haven't bought one since and it's no surprise they're continuing with their lies to their readers. I'll never do anything to help out those that support the privatization of public streams and the degredation of private ones by overstocking and over feeding. Lefty (TFO Flyrods), Barry and Cathy Beck, etc.

12:43 PM  

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