Thom Glace, internationally acclaimed watercolor artist, Atlantic salmon. Click here to visit the website.
Henry Clement, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, August 2023. Photo by Captain Andrew Derr.
By Henry Clement
The old internet was not perfect, but it was remarkably useful. An angler could find serious instruction on tarpon, trout, bonefish, bass, and nearly everything else that swims. The International Game Fish Association provided a deep reservoir of information. Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, NOAA, and The Billfish Foundation brought science, advocacy, and a sense that the angling world had obligations beyond its own pleasures.
It also supported a genuine publishing culture
Digital magazines and websites employed editors and writers who believed readers deserved reporting, argument, craft, and knowledge—not merely content. Fly Rod & Reel, with writers such as John Gierach and Ted Williams and editor Greg Thomas, was among the best. Tom Pero’s Wild Steelhead & Salmon and Fish & Fly Magazine represented another model: independent, serious, and rooted in the fish and places that mattered. High-quality regional print magazines once did the same work across the country. Many are gone now.
In their place stands a diminished landscape
Social media, branding exercises, manufactured consensus, and the weary compulsion to be liked by everyone who matters commercially.
That decline would be regrettable in any era
It is disgraceful in this one. Public lands—the inheritance of every American—are under sustained assault. Access, conservation safeguards, agency authority, and the very idea of a shared national estate are being weakened in plain view.
Illustration by Thom Glace – rainbow trout, brown trout, and brook trout. Used with permission.
This is not a hidden conspiracy
It is an open campaign, carried forward by politicians, donors, ideologues, and speculators who see public ground as inventory awaiting liquidation.
The outdoor industry and much of its media claim to cherish wild country. They praise rivers, elk range, steelhead water, public access, and the democratic freedom to wander. But too often, when those values require courage, the language turns soft.
Thom Glace, the award-winning watercolorist, commissioned a striper that is one of the best illustrations of Morone saxatilis.
Remarkably
Editors who can summon righteous energy to publicly shame a small publication over an inadvertent photo error somehow lose their voices when public land is threatened, environmental law is gutted, or public servants are pressured to serve private interests.
A stolen photograph deserves correction
An apology should be accepted. But anyone who treats that episode as a major moral crusade while remaining quiet about the theft of public land has confused manners with ethics—and editorial theater with principle.
NOTE: The title quote is spoken by Howard Beale, a central character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 film Network.
NOTE 2: The Featured Image is of wolves standing atop a wooden stump in a grassy meadow. Envato image.
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