For years, Larry Burke, who has owned Outside Magazine since 1978, had offers to buy the outdoor media flagship. Always, he turned them down, while also turning Outside into a kind of lifestyle magazine catering to the adventure and wellness communities. Well, he turned them all down until this year, that is.
As of today, Outside Magazine is now part of Pocket Outdoor Media, which already owned a bushel of outdoor titles, including Backpacker, Climbing, Ski, and Beta, the newly launched mountain bike magazine formed from the ashes of Bike Magazine.
Pocket is also rebranding itself as, simply, Outside. In separate deals, Pocket also acquired GaiaGPS, Peloton Magazine, athleteReg, and OutsideTV.
“The timing was right for a number of reasons,” Burke, 78, wrote in an email to The New Mexican. “We have been fortunate to stay independent and profitable for all of these years and that speaks volumes for the talented team that built Outside into an iconic brand. Our industry has weathered all kinds of challenges over four decades, including recessions, the digital explosion and now the pandemic.”
Burke is reportedly stepping down from any work at all with the magazine, to focus on writing his memoirs.
Nobody at Outside Magazine is expected to be laid off in the transaction.
Outside, the newly named media group, not the magazine, also announced this week they’d raised $150 million in funding from Sequoia Heritage, an arm of Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capital firms, and an early investor in companies like AirBnb and DoorDash.
The plan is to allow subscribers to access all of Outside’s (again, the media group) titles with one sign-on process, and, potentially, subscription rate. In theory, for example, one could log-in to Outside’s web portal, then read articles in Backpacker, Beta, or Outside.
It’s a tough world out there for independent media these days, with ad revenue shrinking. Subscription and reader support are the only real ways forward, unless you can capture the vast majority of ad revenue by setting up media conglomerates that can try to monopolize traffic, while also gathering a big subscriber base for a swath of digital content.
It’s also a tough world for magazine lovers who value independent publications, with another biggie entering another big media brand tent.
This article said that GaiaGPS was also swooped up by Pocket Outdoor. That seems like more meaningful news! I look forward to hearing from you on what that acquisition will mean to Gaia, which so many of us love and rely on. Thanks for the timely update.
Huge fans of Gaia here, and I’ve already reached out to them for comment.
I am also interested in this story. We see a similar consolidation of online media titles under the umbrella of OnX—maybe not quite as significant and recognizable, but it’s there.
Yeah, I have to say I was rather irritated/annoyed to see Outside do a “donate money to us” campaign on their website and in print, given how many ways I personally know they monetize their audience. I’m not saying it’s a hugely profitable business but they want me to subscribe to pay for content AND just give them my money because it’s “the right thing” to do? The only way I’d be convinced to do that is if they became a non-profit and fought the good fight. Maybe this way they’ll stop the “donate to us!” nonsense.
Well hopefully good news for Outside magazine! I believe I’ve been reading it since it’s beginning. I’ve been a wilderness educator for 46 years and at times leaned heavily on Outside as a source of information and inspiration.
i subscribe to two independents, adventure journal and the recently resurrected (again!) mountain gazette. here’s hoping you two can stem the tide of some of the toxic aspects of capitalism…..
Larry’s had a long, distinguished run as a magazine publisher. Say what you will, but for many freelancers a story in the feature well at Outside can be the stepping stone to bigger prey at The New Yorker, NYT Magazine and elsewhere. I’ve been very happy with their on-line shift – AJ and Outside (and to an extent SNEWS) are my three go-tos. (Inertia is not bad), and then it’s what my friends share on Twitter or FB. (I came to this story via AJ’s email channel; which, while unsexy, offers great engagement because a) it’s opt-in and b) you’re selling information and entertainment and stoke. Though Outside still devolves into ‘listicle’ type gear stores, they also have best in class writers like Alex Hutchinson and others. Good for Pocket Media; a plucky little brand making some big waves. Speaking of waves, if they could only pry the Surfer name away from David Pecker (why is AMI being so stingy, here?). Also, hasn’t Outside been “crying poor” and asking for reader donations to finance its online content? Another question, more from a reader’s perspective, is would Outside change to a high-end quarterly, let’s say, that would look and feel (ahem…) like AJ? As a self-admitted magazine junkie, it pains me that there is still a shit-ton of, well, crappy publications out there that want $9 per issue. AJ, Surfer’s Journal, Rouleur and the odd arty title like Monster’s Children and Kinfolk are showing a way forward that is far more appealing than trad media. Best of luck to Pocket and their ancillary titles. Please revive Powder and Surfer, ASAP.
Press release content farm. That’s gonna be a no from me. I’m sure Gaia’s new TNF store locator is not far off.
“Venture capital” = a pure bottom line and goal of profit , thus a total loss of integrity within the editorial or side bar content. For example, those “gear reviews” are simply paid for by the manufactures or their p.r. firms, camouflaged with some faux sense of objective review. I have the utmost respect and loyalty to those independent magazines (Adventure Journal, The Drake) that have avoided this pitfall and corruption.
I really hope this doesnt mean bad things for Gaia. That App has literally taken me around the world.
Well, Outside has been pretty much a been a bland, appeal to the Patagonia vest, content generator and click-bait hustle for the last, at least, ten years. It used to be a really good publication but once you show your politics (no matter which side of the aisle) and give in to the social media/ad driven model (and you almost have to in order to stay afloat or make any real money) then it’s all downhill from there. I used to read Outside, Dirt Rag, Surfers Journal, Thrasher religiously. The scenes have all changed, change is what happens. Now we have very few good sources for pure content for our lifestyle. Also, once vulture capital gets involved….you. are. f@#%$d.
Note, Ken, that Lyin’ Ted Cruz was wearing a blue Patagonia puffy when he returned from his mercy mission to Mexico. He might have been reading the current issue of O on his emergency flight back.
What does that have to do with anything I said? Also, who is Ken?
Apologies K, for calling you “Ken” and my lame attempt at humor was riffing on Outside being targeted at the Patagonia vest crows. Numerous photos of Cruz coming back to Texas from Mexico showed him rockin’ a blue Patagonia puffy jacket, which is not likely their idea of a “brand ambassador.” I agree with you about the ‘social media driven model’ of monetizing audiences, but you can pretty much go to one of two models, the AJ model, which seems to struggle with finding subscribers (and it’s not cheap) or the Outside model, which outwardly seems successful but they have recently gone cap in hand to their online readers. I personally have always considered myself to be a magazine guy, but – and editors are loathe to admit this – you cannot buy good stories or photos if your ad sales don’t support your business model. Outside’s list of contributors over the decades is so far above what everyone else has been able to do because somehow they’ve found the money to pay the Jon Krakauers of the world. It won National Magazine Awards during the Susan Casey years; a rare case of where an art director shared equal billing with the editor on a magazine masthead. The real issue, and it’s not talked about much, is that really good salespeople are hard to find and they’re not likely working in ad sales; they’re probably at Tesla dealerships or real estate brokerages.
Well, don’t forget that ad revenue for print is drying up everywhere. The best ad sales team on earth can’t do much about that. The digital $$ models are now well-established. Pump content to drive traffic, regardless of quality, similar in a way to artificially inflated circumstances numbers from mags that sold subs at $10/year, so that ad buys come from getting tons of page views; somehow come up with terrific content on a shoestring that drives enough traffic to sell ads; run short lists of gear with $$ coming from affiliate sales on product links; or put your articles behind a paywall. Or some combination of the above. My gut instinct tells me the future of this biz lies in reader support, with maybe one or two big brand sponsors/supporters on one side, and pure social media+ buyer guide catalogs on the other. Outside is doing something interesting by being packaged with a ton of other titles you can subscribe to for $99/year, potentially with service apps like Gaia as part of package. Something akin to the Surfline model where people subscribe for the surf forecast service, and occasionally read an okay article. Personally, as you can imagine, I’m team high quality supported by readers, or else, why do this at all.
Accepted, I think we just read each other wrong. I’ll be honest, I don’t get how every.freaking.thing. Every article, every comment on every internet post has to have an element of Trump bad or republican bad. I get it when the article is about politics, but this was clearly not. It just seems peoples brains have been re-wired to view every facet of life through some odd political lens. Again, like another comment I made here, stay out of the social media and news stream trash and suddenly your mind can clear. You are clearly a gifted writer and very intelligent thinker, re-focus. Trump is gone, Biden is here. We still have the same problems. If you stoop to comment about politics when they aren’t involved at all, at least make a broad accusation versus focused on one party as they (politicians and politics in general) all suck 🙂
Frankly, as a Canadian, I can’t vote in American elections. The point was more of a tongue in cheek observation; brands love it when musicians. entertainers, athletes etc “rock their brand”; Ted Cruz, a rock-ribbed Republican surely in favor of expanding drilling rights and loosening environmental protections, is as far away from what we’ve come to define as “the Patagoniac”, as there is. I’ll be honest, Ted Cruz scared me far more than Donald Trump when they were running for Party leadership but Ted’s picked up Trump’s knack for lying. I was just telling someone today how much more space has been cleared up in my brain now that Trump is no longer in power. Sorry, I also think the old “all politicians are the same/corrupt/self interested” is a cop-out. But Canadians probably expect more from their elected officials, and there isn’t nearly the amount of easy dough to be made. You are 100 percent right about social media and, generally, about ‘blowing up yer TV/throw away yer papers.”
AJ needs to add a like button 🙂
If this means that every Outside story no longer revolves around racism or climate change, I’m in (and may resubscribe). I’m all for those causes, but sometimes you just want to read about an epic trip and escape the everyday noise. Time will tell…
You mean you don’t like being fed a constant line of how terrible a person you are and how we are all screwed but would rather enjoy your one life? Get out of here you terrible, terrible person. I find it interesting how when I quit social media and mainstream news for at least a two week period and just focus on my family, my work and my outdoor pursuits suddenly the world looks like a nicer place, people are nicer and the sky actually isn’t falling. Sure there are real problems and issues about us, there always has been and always will be but it seems like 80% or even more of our “problems” exist in an online world, not real life. Think about it and act accordingly. The world looks pretty good, even bad ol’ America!
Amen…. I agree
Excellent observations, Justin. Another part of the digital equation is its insane need for growth and engagement. Not to get too into the weeds on the biz side of things, but if I link to an Outside story on my FB feed, my personal info goes directly to Facebook to monetize THEIR ad platform, not Outside’s. Who knows, maybe Pocket Media itself will be sold to Google or Amazon in the next year in one of those outsized unicorn deals that were big back in the First Tech Boom in the late 90s. (Because really, is owning/managing a suite of websites really THAT satisfying? I suspect not). Or, Pocket could be shopping an IPO, which would be a sweet reward for those on the insiders’ list. We are already seeing a decreased number of free stories at sites like Bloomberg, Business Insider and The Atlantic. The NYTimes digital revenue surpassed its print revenue for the first time last year. People crave news and marketers crave an audience, and to do that you have to scale some really big numbers. Or, like AJ, play the small game, stick to your brand ethics and similar to arts and culture magazines, rely on a series of patrons/advertisers to keep the lights on. One final comment about ad reps: every one of them that I’ve ever talked to seems unaware of print media’s unique proposition and that is, “to read the magazine, you must read the ad. Very few of us flip directly to the feature well; first, you have to go past those double-page spreads banked at the front of the book. That is not an ephemeral experience, it cannot be blocked by clicking your remote or using ad blocker. The reader WILL SEE THE AD. Which is why millions used to be spent on creative, but that’s a story for another day. As a brand, Outside is and always will be a category killer. And last I looked, a DPS was still a $100K ad buy.
I had a feeling I could come here for some perspectives besides what is being propagated by the dozens of press releases. While I sure do understand that publishers are desperate to survive, this media acquisition is pretty jaw dropping to me and everyone seems to be celebrating it. I don’t get it. Does everyone feel this acquisition is saving jobs and saving the brands we have come to love? I am an outsider and don’t know what is really going on BTS at all these mags (and Gaia) but dang. Just raised all the red flags for me personally.
I used to work at Outside and still have a great deal of buds there and can confidently say things have not improved on the culture / editorial front with the acquisition. And despite their promises of 30-day payments they continue to be delinquent on payments to freelancers. The membership model is way overzealous. There’s no way they’re going to get 10% of readers to pay that high fee when they’re competing with everyone from Netflix and Hulu and Spotify to premium media subscriptions like the New York Times or The Atlantic or Adventure Journal.
Just went to check out GaiaGPS… and realized that the public photos for a local trail are mine… with no photo credit given.
If media companies don’t want people stealing content, they need to not steal content.
Guessing they claim the right to use them in the terms and conditions.