There was a time the magazines were worthwhile in large part because they wrote the truth.
If your team was bad (As a TCU alum I can attest to this.) they would say that School A is facing some challenges in the offensive line or secondary or the entire fucking roster, but they wrote the truth.
Then they started writing to not piss anyone off and basically what you got are inaccurate depth charts, incomplete rosters, and lukewarm pablum of your favorite school with a shift to national topics that could posted in any of the magazines versions across the country.
Now, with the portal, the push to get more freshmen on the field to get what you can out of them before they possibly leave, conference realignment, and the conference scheduling that makes no fucking sense the writing has literally become throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks and what slides down.
As far as Dave Campbell, it much like Whataburger, hasn't been worth a damn since it was sold to the assholes north of Texas. Campbell knew the State, he knew the coaches, and his staff had a great feel for the high schools. Being honest, i am not sure how in the world anyone possibly get their arms around that much information as there are over 3,000 high schools in Texas.
Yes, there are going to be the automatics in each classification, but there are always schools that come out of nowhere and for me it is the same reason why recruiting lists really aren't as valuable as they once were in that there are just too damn many to be accurate.