Last night, returning home from Denver and the Outdoor Retailer trade show, I was stuck in the third row from the back on an oversold United flight, with two babies behind me who cried and fussed the entire two and a half hours. Surely, I thought, there’s a metaphor in there about business today, or publishing, or the competing demands of readers and advertisers, but it didn’t come to me. I just slipped in my ear plugs, pulled my hood over my eyes, and settled into a a semi-lucid dream nap.
That’s pretty much how OR, and trade shows in general, come off—as semi-lucid dream naps. For me, this show was light on brand appointments and heavier on connecting with individuals, allowing room for the aisle magic that occurs when you run into an old friend (or a new one) on your way to the free coffee at Bogs. Perhaps because of that, or maybe just because, this show’s tea leaves were a bit more muddled.
The most intriguing technology development at the show was the launch of a new waterproof and breathable fabric from the North Face called FutureLight. TNF actually announced FutureLight at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but this was its launch to the outdoor press. Two years in development, and led by Scott Mellin, TNF’s GM of mountain sports, the fabric is air permeable, which increases breathability and comfort. That isn’t new, and neither is the “nanospinning” process that lets the North Face create a mesh-like waterproof membrane that Mellin says is so porous it’s 85 percent air, but TNF claims FutureLight outperforms similar products, while being made of 100 percent recycled nylon and using PFC-free water-resistance coatings. Not trivially, it also allows TNF to stop using expensive Gore-Tex products in its technical pieces (no word on pricing yet).
I caught up with Mellin afterward and he was most fired up about the tunability of the fabric. There are five weights of membrane and more than 50 face and backing fabrics, allowing TNF to make garments you can wear in the Himalaya (as Hilaree O’Neill did on her first descent of the Lhotse Couloir) or t-shirts or single-wall tents. If FutureLight works as claimed, and if the delicate membrane holds up under heavy use, it’s a big deal. I’m eager to test it and see how it compares to eVent, NeoShell, Outdoor Research’s AscentShell, and Gore products.
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Personally, the product I’m most excited about it the Kalk Cake electric motorcycle, which is now available street legal. It’s spit-your-coffee expensive ($13,000) but offers a really compelling look at an exhaust-free future. I’m hoping for an exploration vehicle that more fun than a truck, less taxing than a mountain bike, and less polluting than a dirt bike. Every few weeks, I find myself trolling Craigslist for low-hour dirtbikes, but, really, there isn’t room in my life for a commitment to something that environmentally dirty (with my LX470, that’s more than enough dirt). Cake is far lighter than, say, Zero electric bikes, and nimbler, too, and I have a serious case of lust. That price, though. Jeez.
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Burying the lede here because I wanted to get the lightest stuff out of the way. The thing people were talking about the most was the disappearance from OR of the crew from Powder and Transworld titles. Normally, these guys are a staple at the snow show (and parties like the Teton Gravity Research bash Wednesday night), but after brief appearances on the first day, they all canceled their appointments and flew home, sparking a wildfire of rumors.
As it turns out, the publishing group that holds them—The Enthusiast Network, or TEN—is being sold to American Media, which is owned by David Pecker, lately famous for his friendship with Donald Trump. American Media also owns National Enquirer and Men’s Journal, and Pecker was deeply involved in the efforts to keep Trump’s extramarital dalliances a secret. TEN employees received an email telling them to be home for a mandatory meeting on Thursday, where they were funneled into one of two time slots. The group in one time slot was fired, while the other was retained, reported Australia’s Stab magazine.
“It was like you were either being sent to the gas chambers, or you’d get to live another day,” one anonymous employee told Stab.
I have not been able to reach my friends of Powder—having been through something like this in 1998 when Surfer Publications was sold to Peterson Publishing, I know how much it rocks your world—but it’s been reported that half of Surfer’s staff is being let go, including 20-year veteran photo editor Grant Ellis and publisher Tony Perez. Transworld Motocross is being shut down, wrote founder Donn Maeda in a blog post that was later taken down.
Only one of TEN’s 14 titles, which also includes Bike magazine, made money last year, and the group lost $1 million in 2018, Stab reported. American Media this afternoon acknowledged the purchase in a bland, perfume-covered pig of a news release, saying that TEN will remain in Carlsbad, California, and that (cough) no staff reductions are planned.
This news follows a wave of gnarly developments in the media world. BuzzFeed announced it’s laying off 15 percent of its staff and at HuffPost 800 people are losing their jobs. Gannett, my old employer from way, way, way back, is slashing jobs at many of the small newspapers it owns across the U.S., further gutting local journalism.
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I am an idealistic capitalist, if there is such a thing. I believe wholeheartedly in the basic human right to pursue one’s fortune. I also believe in capitalist Darwinism—if you can’t deliver something people want and do it profitably over time, your company will die, and that’s as it should be. But in the 1990s, when I was the editor of Powder and Bike, I watched as a small group of well-intended and right-minded employees tried to purchase our publishing group, only to see it sold to a group of feral speculators at a higher price. I lost my job in that transaction, but I understand that these things happen: The old management goes. What soured me was seeing firsthand and experiencing personally how a small group of people can screw over dozens, hundreds, while eviscerating culturally important entities like Powder and Surfer in the name of profit.
Then in the 2000s, I watched as National Geographic closed Adventure, which had been my editorial home and bread and butter for 11 years. I was freelance, and NGA was orders of magnitude my biggest client, so it hurt a lot, but worse was seeing so many friends lose great jobs, as well as the dissolution of a phenomenal staff.
Both of these developments led to the creation of Adventure Journal. While still at NGA, I started a blog called The Adventure Life. That evolved into AJ, and when NG Adventure shut down, AJ started accepting advertising and began the commercial path that it’s following today. From the beginning, I have tried to incorporate the best practices of small enthusiast publications like Powder while embracing philosophies of big ones like NGA, all while trying to say lean in the name of flexibility.
Most important, I have tried to live my values expressed in the way AJ is made, how we treat the people who contribute, and how and what we cover. I don’t want to come across as sanctimonious, but many of the practices I saw and experienced working with other titles, in particular as a freelancer, disgusted me. This has led to policies that aren’t necessarily in the best financial interest of AJ, but are the right thing to do. Our contract, for example, asserts that the copyright of a story or photo belongs to the creator. Sounds basic, right? And yet, almost every publication now insists on taking (stealing) the copyright for themselves. We pay far higher word rates than any publication our size and we pay people promptly or early. We do not accept sponsored content, we don’t sell our social posts, and you can’t pay us to write about your product.
With our printed journal, we use high-quality, heavy weight paper that’s Forest Stewardship Council certified sustainable. We print in the United States. We send the magazine via EcoEnclose recycled paper envelopes that are dang expensive. Every single one of these practices means lower margins and less profit, but we do them because I believe they’re the right thing to do. We also do them because I believe the only truly sustainable path is to publish on a smaller scale, be good at what you do, be transparent at how you do it, and put your readers first. Not only is that ethical, I believe with everything I have that it’s the smartest path for enthusiast title like ours.
Publishing, as today’s headlines remind us, is damn hard. The path we’ve chosen is even harder. But we are profitable, and our experience gives me faith that professional enthusiast publishing remains a viable business, not to mention a really fun way to make a living. But I also think that as creators and communicators we need to be more transparent about business practices, more demanding of who we support, and more supportive of what we value. We need to consider alternative structures for publishing, B Corps or non-profits, perhaps, and we need to call bullshit on a regulatory system that says the legal imperative of a public company is to maximize shareholder profits. If the owner of Surfer Publications had agreed to an employee buyout in 1998 rather than selling to the highest bidder, those magazines might not be in the place they’re in today.
Who knows? I sure don’t. Large forces, like social media, are at play. Advertisers have sooo many places to put their marketing dollars. Readers—all of us—are fickle. Business owners have to be nimble and smart. But it can be done, even for an enthusiast publication embattled by branded content and YouTubers and forums. You have to be entertaining, and insightful, and open, and have a personal connection to your readers, but you can do it. My hope for Powder and Surfer and Bike and all the other titles is that they quickly get sold off to small independent publishers who can give them the love they need.
Last night, as I sat on the plane, listened to those babies cry, and speculated on the fate of TEN, I kept searching for the metaphor but couldn’t find it. Despite the darkness in the publishing industry, despite the incredibly dynamic challenges of our times, despite learning today about people losing their jobs, I’m feeling optimistic.
I’ve often said that I want to high five or give a hug to every single one of our subscribers as an expression of gratitude, and at the show I had that opportunity. My friend Laura was there with her boss, who said, “I’m a subscriber!” I said, “Can I give you a hug?” She said yes, so I did, and it was just about the best moment of the show.
And now I’m left thinking that as simple as it sounds, if we can just remember the importance of face to face respect, gratitude, and connection, if we can bring, for lack of a better word, love into our business considerations, then we’ll be okay. And crying babies will be just that, crying babies, and nothing more.
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Proud to be an original and forever subscriber. Keep up the awesome work…and yeah, I’m lusting after the Kalk too.
It not only feels good to support AJ’s “idealistic capitalist” philosophies, but those ideals show in the product, too. Thank you!
AJ is my number one daily website
I am a multi year subscriber and enjoy your content very much.
The print is so great to have. I keep them, re read them and my kids read them.
We need analog in our digital world.
Keep up the great work
I am in the midst of building a bookshelf, floor to ceiling, to house/display an embarrassingly large number of books collected over the years. Only books that seem important and worthy of rereading are being kept.
One shelf has been set aside specifically for AJ volumes 1 – 11.
I have left a lot of space on that shelf for future growth.
Heartfelt and honest piece. Thank you Steve.
Love the philosophy, love the journal. Thanks for getting it going and, as a subscriber, I’m happy to throw my support behind it. It’s also one of the things my 7 week old seems to enjoy me reading to him – though he’s probably just groking the fact that I enjoy it so much. Should we ever cross paths – be ready for that high five.
Uggg. News of this came this morning as I drove my son to the mountain to ski. A pro skier who I photograph often sent me the link to this article.
As a contributor to many outdoor publications, I see a darkness within. I feel the world values the outdoors less and less. They have truly forgotten that outside is salvation to many, myself included. It matters. ALOT. It is far more important than numbers in a ledger or what actor is wearing what designer, but I also get that it is still important for that ledger to have some kind of positive number attached to it. I struggle with that very concept every day I sit down at my computer and work at my own company.
I only know a few things I have been taught in life and when one door closes and another opens. So while I could easily just go to the dark side, the coming weeks will probably shed more light on this tragic news.
There will be a positive future for those of us who chose that direction.
Jay—all due respect, but I do think the world values being outdoors, perhaps more than ever. From the coverage of forest bathing to Scottish doctors prescribing time in nature as therapy, there’s more acceptance of the health and spiritual benefits of being outside than there’s ever been. What I think has been lost (if it was ever there) is the understanding that these companies are being built by and for human beings and should be conducted with appropriate empathy and gratitude. If you want to be transactional about it, I think that AJ in print offers tremendous value—we beg and plead and ask people to subscribe, but it’s not like it’s charity. They’re getting what we think is the best outdoor magazine available. But we aren’t transaction people here, and the outdoor culture prides itself on being like a family, and I believe that the karma you create as a company ripples throughout the world as much or more than any single individual. If we thought about the ripple affects on people of our decisions in business as much as we think about the bottom line, we’d all be richer—in good will for sure, and, who knows, maybe in our bank accounts.
We’ve moved four times in the last year and Adventure Journal (every issue from number one) has followed me the entire time. I even took the winter issue down the Grand Canyon. AJ continues to be a glimmer of light in an otherwise dark world of garbage journalism and content. Thanks for the continued excellence!
I wonder what surfer pubs got sold to Peterson in ‘98? Maybe mismanagement of revenue? Maybe some lining of their own pockets? High horses make it difficult to see the truth.
Not sure what you’re wondering—the sale price? I don’t think that was reported. In 1996, Petersen was purchased in a leverage buyout for a reported $450 million. The new owner went on a spending spree, buying up magazines like Surfer, Powder, and Bike, to pad the company. Three months after purchasing Surfer et. al., Petersen was sold to Emap in the UK for $1.5 BILLION. The LBO firm made a tidy profit of $1 billion in two years.
Emap got hosed. Three years later, it dumped the Petersen assets, selling them to Primedia for $505 million, a $1 billion loss.
Meanwhile, a handful of already rich old white men were sitting on $1 billion profit, while magazines like ours were circling the drain.
I have noticed Transworld Motocross has been damn near impossible to find locally lately (Barnes & Noble’s hasn’t even had it since the October issue). Your report on TEN kinda lends weight to my speculation of them being either bought out or discontinued.
It sucks, since now I have to rely on “Dirt Bike” for MX news. Transworld is like the National Geographic of motocross; DB and its sibling Motocross Action are like the National Enquirer. Even Dirt Rider’s been noticeably AWOL lately. WTF?
Steve and Joni:
AJ is a great magazine and concept — every issue entertains, delights and informs its readers. At the same time, you respect and value the work of your writers and contributors. Keep up the good fight!
Thanks, Chris!
Good piece, it talked me into subscribing. Sorry it took so long.
So glad to welcome you on board!
I’m a subscriber and look forward to your posts everyday! Thank you so much!!
Thanks for the analysis Steve and for facing and bracing against the print media headwinds during this unrelenting storm.
I’ll echo the sentiments expressed by others in this comment section. I love AJ and only regret that I had not subscribed sooner than I did. I look forward to receiving each issue and I also enjoy the daily emails that offer interesting stories and perspectives. It is rare (and I hope rewarding) to have a brand like AJ that isn’t simply liked by your readers, but one to which they (we) feel an actual connection. Thank you for all you do.
Thanks, Alan. Really appreciate it. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing more of AJ’s story just so people have a better understanding of what we’re all about. Not many know that Joni and I are the only two people who work on AJ full time. Justin is close to full time. Everyone else whose name you see in bylines or on the masthead is an independent contractor—critical to what we’re doing, but not as deeply involved. So, there really is just a few of us, and we see every comment, and we draw deeply on your encouragement. Thank you.
I used to subscribe to Surfer. I loved the pieces but it got pretty skimpy and I sadly moved far from decent surf. It should be criminal what’s been done to publishing/news in general. I would love to try to get my local library to subscribe as they have a lot of magazines for outdoor types. Anything to take money from people like Pecker and give it to people with ethics instead and letting creators keep their rights is worthy cause. Thanks for writing more of your personal backstory. Add me to the list of wishing I found AJ sooner.
déjà vu – all over again…
Hearing this message never gets any easier – so much upheaval in the name of profit for the few from them many.
I hope that all the friends and colleagues affected by this will find the silver lining by landing somewhere unexpected and awesome…
Thanks for doing what you do Steve.
Onward.
You’re welcome, Bob. It’s hard to watch. I also have to say, it makes me uncomfortable to keep asking people to support AJ. But if everybody who watched our flipthrough video on Instagram yesterday subscribed, we’d be 85% of the way to our goal for long-term sustainability—to the point where we could have the same kind of help on print that we have online. I feel like a nag, constantly asking, but if we don’t meet our goals and if I don’t get to the point where I don’t have to work 80-hour weeks, there’s a chance AJ won’t last, either. I pay for quite a few subscriptions and services because I know that if I value something, I have to support it.
Proud to be an original subscriber/card carrying member/connected by email and quarterly by paper.
Keep asking – just don’t stop publishing.
More ads from the people and companies that want to reach your audience are just fine with me if that helps, too.
Thanks, Ned. Thank you for all your emails, too. On the advertising front, we’re not going to change. We love our ad partners. We love keeping the ads limited to about 10% of the book. And we’re happy with the revenue ratio—we’d rather the ad revenue not be more than subscriber revenue. Unfortunately, at this point it still is. I feel that readers have a responsibility to be a part of something they love and to support it materially if they can. I do this with all kinds of publications and groups and I don’t think twice about the money. It’s way better spent than on another cuppa at Starbucks.
I understand that people want their media to be free. But they also need to understand there are real people trying to make a living giving them what they love. For the last 10 years, I’ve worked 80-hour weeks to build AJ and give it to people for free, while making less than I made in my 20s. That’s my choice and I’m comfortable with it—that’s what launching a business means. But now that we have what I think is an EXTRAORDINARY print product, that you guys tell me you LOVE, we need AJ readers to step up. I’m far less concerned about the making a living part than I am being able to get other people involved, so we can make AJ better. This pace is untenable and I won’t do it forever—either we’ll get the reader support that allows us a small staff or at some point I’ll shut it down or sell it, neither of which I want to do.
Here’s one way I look at it. Outside has a circulation of 675,000. Now, we are completely different publications, but we’re talking to the same people. If just two percent of those people subscribed to AJ, we’d have the resources to get all the editors and support we need, we could work reasonable hours and have adventures of our own, we could rejoin One Percent for the Planet, and, well, the list goes on. We’d be a thriving business.
So, I’ll keep asking. 🙂
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