As this in the general section and not the showroom then I consider it up for general comment....
Here's my general comment...
I think you can see it both ways...yours and mine, darren.
I do believe your way is a valid view and personally I am under no illusions. A girlfriend is employed full time by a leading country paper and she is paid crap money to do a heck of a lot of work, she is always letting me know what full time journalism is about.
However, this is how I see it.
I'm out there, camping and enjoying myself, the fact that I like to take photos and write is just one other aspect to my character, so I see it as a great way to do what I love doing and get a bit of a bonus by having a magazine pay for my effort of sorting through the images and getting the words down. Something which I find easy to do and enjoy doing as well. Considering in the recent edition of CTA, it was said that there are 13 thousand or so people reading the publication, then that's about 10 thousand more than Myswag and the more who see where to go in our great country, the better I say!! So, I guess what I'm saying is that money is not my issue. I'm probably more about the story and the pictures.
Hopefully, this will be considered as a fair comment...
(Whilst I know that there are nearly 7 thousand members here, I am pretty sure that I've not got even near to 1 thousand views on my trip report...so the figures above are just a rough guesstimation.)