WARNING ... THIS MAY TURN OUT TO BE TOO LONG FOR MANY GETBIG READERS. NO BIG WORDS THOUGH. BUT PROCEED WITH CAUTI0N ...
This may be somewhat related with the present MD situation ... but not entirely.
But in this case history seems to repeat itself a bit.
Once upon a time way back in the Mike Mentzer era .... everyone who lifted heavy things or entered a bodybuilding contest had strong desires to get a 'mention' in one of the national weight related (bodybuilding, powerlifting, olympic lifting) magazines.
And your photo in one of the magazines was really worth a thousand words, but for most everyone ... an impossibility.
But the few magazines that existed at that time were definitely uninterested unless you were a Bob Bednarski or a Mike Mentzer or a writer such as a guy called Rick Wayne and needless to say ... I'm neglecting a handful of others.
But there were exceptions if you happened to win a "major contest" such as the Mr. California or if you happened to catch the eye of Joe Weider.
So there were many thousands of individuals who felt that they were being overlooked because their weight lifting related accomplishments went un-noticed and un-published in a national magazine.
But those who accomplished the impossible by 'being published' were held in high esteem by thousand of others who went un-noticed.
They became something like Princes within their little Muscledom Kingdom within any local gym as 'knighted' by 'Uncle Joe' himself.
But those princes were exceptionally rare and it was almost impossible for the hundreds (it was all so small back then) to get national recognition.
And the Knight in Shining Armor (the internet) was too far away to be of any help.
But a handful of individuals managed to 'jump the shark' and accomplish the impossible.
Un-be-knownst to most of us ... some will known individuals of this present day wrote the magazine articles that became 'knownst' to all of us ..... but under pen names that were unknown by each of us. (Bill Star for example who did a lot of "authorship" for the Hoffman camp.)
But did they make a decent living? Did they get paid for their magazine efforts which often included photographs of their likeness in just about every issue"
In most cases I would GUESS that the answer would be, "NO! Not in hard, cold cash anyway!"
They got paid in other ways!
Such as .....
I don't have to make a guess about the following individuals (and here is where the Muscle Development situation may be a distant similarity).
First up ... Mike Mentzer (he told me this story personally) ....
Mike had been writing articles and appearing in photos for Mr. Weiger's magazine and one day decided to go into Joe's office and ask for an increase in his salary.
I never did ask Mike, but it's possible that he received no salary at all due to the fact that the publicity he received through the magazine was enough to be considered a salary by Uncle Joe.)
So Joe asked Mike if a one-page ad in the magazine would suffice in leu of a salary.
And he proceeded to convince Mike that it would be better than a salary or an increase in his present salary if such a salary existed at all.
So Mike somewhat reluctantly agreed.
To be continued if there is any interest.......
