I've made a living writing about recreational stuff since 1976. First it was hook and bullet, then it was golf course maintenance.
Here's the deal, virtually no publication in either of those fields has the money required to pay writers and cover their expenses for any of the really interesting stuff you see published.
It's especially bad in the hunting, fishing and travel businesses. The magazines have never paid enough so that someone could go on a trip, pay their own way, and make even a dime of profit. And there's no possibility that an outdoor writer could test equipment by buying it like Consumer Reports does. So they get free or discounted trips and equipment.
The Outdoor Writers Assn. of America, of which I was once a member, tries to handle a lot of this stuff in this document
http://owaa.org/about/owaa-code-of-ethics/. It's not perfect, but they're trying.
When I was doing hunting and fishing writing I worked for the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Dept. we worked with the Tourism Dept. which put us in contact with travel writers. Their situation is even worse. Magazines wanted stories on travel to interesting places but couldn't or wouldn't pay expenses.
We joked that the travel writers were some of the worst moochers we ever saw. At the bottom of the barrel are guys like the one who called a pheasant outfitter who charged about $1,000 a day for hunting and told him that if he paid ALL the costs of a trip to South Dakota he'd get him an article in the Wall Street Journal... and delivered. The outfiitter said he was one of the grubbiest people he ever dealt with.
Some of the same is true in the turf business. Without help from the industry, articles on a number of subjects would simply be impossible under the kinds of budgets available.
Anyway, I said for years that what I did wasn't actually journalism, but the more it appeared to be journalism the better job I was doing. That didn't always make some of my coworkers happy, but it's pretty close to the mark.
I still do some freelancing, and I simply couldn't get some of the stories I need without help from the industry. My goal is to write in such a way that the help they give doesn't affect the finished product in any significant way. A story on a new class of plant protection products developed by one of the big companies is of interest to readers, and it's pretty obvious that the details of the product and contacts of supers using it are coming from the company.
Most of the supers are going to be straight shooters about their experience, and it's easy enough to make it clear that the claims made are coming directly from the company. "XYZ claims that..." "The company says that..." "Company spokesman Bob Smith said,"
It's certainly no worse than universities taking grant money from a chemical company to test the efficacy of a new product.
Of course there are times and places where advertisers have direct influence, but I think it's generally less than many imagine it to be. indirectly, you have to know that every writer and editor is aware of how advertisers will react to their work. It HAS to have an impact. OTOH, I have been in some discussions where ad sales people relayed a critical message from industry folks and the editorial staff's response was, "Screw 'em." It didn't always work, however.
Anyway, except for newspapers, who often won't let their writers even accept free lunch (except sportswriters) are among a pretty small group of publications who can afford to be pure.... and they aren't doing so well these days either.
ken