You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?
-carly simon

My math skills suck. If I wanted to advance my math skills I’d read a 9th grade text book.  On the other hand, if I want to be inspired by the possibilities of math I read Einstein or Hawking.  Yeah, I may not quite get every point, yet I’m inspired to try to understand. I’ve never thought of them as "elitist".

A readers letter published in the newest issue of Ocean Paddler magazine did suggest that OP was a bit elitist. Why? Because they did not carry enough material for the novice paddler.  Of course the reader misunderstands the definition of the word elitist.;

e·lit·ism or é·lit·ism n.

Simply targeting an audience with more advanced skills is NOT elitist. Taking pride in knowing more than someone else, showing it off, and rubbing their nose in it,  is.  Assuming that anyone who knows more than you is arrogant is in itself an arrogant point of view.  Humility and knowledge often do not correlate as one would think.

OP for their part is actually moving to introduce good content for beginners. This month by example, they provide an article on how to use a VHF Radio. They plan to do more of it.  Good.  ON the other side of things,  I’ve been pleased that OP is providing articles for those of us in the more intermediate area. That’s really a first. The other magazines out there don’t spend much time addressing in detail subjects such as Incident Management and so on.  Apparently people interested in such things are not a large enough part of their readership. 

That’s the thing with magazines,  you have to sell enough of them to live.  In order to do this you have to be all things to all people, ruled by generic volume. In fact if you take a bit of time to look around at most kayak magazines, you’ll see how each has developed a format where they produce sections that reach out to each part of their readership. The upside is that they do provide something for the widest possible audience, the down side is that they all start looking the same. For the magazine this more generic approch has it’s own risk that people will tend to be less loyal.  In the end they are not so much unique or elitist as they are struggling for market share.

Another issue of course is that "beginner" content is fairly static.  Once you write about "How to use a VHF" for example, chances are you won’t have to write that article again for a very long time. In addition, many other publications will have written on the same beginner subjects multiple times as well.  By it’s nature information for beginners will be repeated and rehashed everywhere. This is because the information is changing very little, but new people are continually coming into the sport and don’t have a simple way to find all that back information. To address these new folks magazines often just re-write & re-package it. Beginners in anything are of course the best customers. It’s just simpler and more profitable to re-write it every so often.

I’ve faced this a bit on my blog as well.  Over time I’ve written many posts on beginner issues. In fact many visitors each day arrive here after searching for something like "rolling" or "how to pick a kayak", etc.  As an instructor I most enjoy teaching folks who are brand new to sea kayaking. Still, these days I don’t write much about novice issues unless there is really something new to add.  Often I’ve written it before. It has crossed my mind to write about these same topics every year, but why keep re-writing them? Unlike a magazine, I have no profit motive. I don’t need to sell issues. . . What I’d much rather do is organize a better way for beginners to find that material which tends to get buried in the archives.

To avoid continually re-writing the same materials, magazines can (and some have), publish a "beginners" issue every year separate from their normal circulation that covers all the basics and adds a bit here and there as well. Most of the material year to year would be the same, but you could edit it keep up to date.  The problem with that is now your regular publication lacking this beginner material, would become "elitist", and that’s where the whole problem started in the first place.

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