What's So Hard About Gear Reviews?

In this week’s “Fine Lines” segment, Phil Monahan answers the question What’s So Hard About Gear Reviews? The role of subjectivity combined with the expense of testing, the long-time magazine editor says, make gear reviews an enormous challenge.
“If you ask the cynical wing of the fly-fishing community, they’ll tell you that magazines don’t review products because they are afraid of losing advertisers. (Although the cynical wing of the magazine business may respond, ‘What advertisers?’) The fact is, none of the top four or five magazines operates this way. There’s no nefarious quid pro quo, in which editors agree to puff a product just to win advertising revenues.”