Is Snowboard Print Media Dead?
Growing up in Western New York I read snowboarding magazines religiously to escape from the mundane world I was surrounded in. While my teachers would preach to me the benefits of becoming a dairy farmer, diesel mechanic, or working at Wal Mart, I would slip away into the world the magazines created. For about fourteen years now I’ve held various magazine subscriptions, but some where in that time frame I’ve drifted from sitting right down and engrossing myself in their pages, to instead delegating them to the appropriate reading room to be perused through occasionally. With how we get our information is there still a need for print media in the snowboard world?
Yesterday Source Interlink filed for a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What’s that have to do with snowboarding? They’re the publisher of Snowboarder Magazine. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean the magazine is gone, just means that the company is going to be restructuring and trying to eliminate debt. Although being 1.5 billion, yes that’s right billion, it’s going to be interesting.
This adds to the original question of is print media dead? According to last weeks poll on here, 68% of you feel magazines still have their place, 5% said no, and 25% are all about the Internet. Has anyone picked up a magazine lately and seen how thin they’ve become? Transworld lost 9.8% of their advertising revenue since last year according to Magazine Publishers of America. Which I guess you could say is more thriller and less filler, I know I’m not complaining about that. Although the content of magazines seems to make snowboarding look less approachable to most people. How many people are in the percentile that can afford Heli or cat trips? It’s a very small percentage.
The Internet is definitely taking away from them. If you do a google search of snowboard news sites you get almost 300,000 links and if you type in snowboard blogs you get 2.5 million more options. I haven’t used a snowboard magazine or its site to get my shred news in years. It’s far to easy to just log on hit up the few blogs I frequent and see what’s going on, add to that all the video hosting sites out there and why bother reading an article from someone who took pictures of the event when you can either watch it streamed live or catch the video of it. Case in point the Grenade Games, you can watch that on hundreds of sites. You won’t need to wait 5 months till a new issue hits your door steps to see what went down. Let alone the ability to make snowboarding look more approachable by the masses is here. TJ Schnieder with his Snowboard Realms is a great example of this, possibly one of the best ways to get people involved. Magazines need to find a way to make the content allow readers to see snowboarding as not such an elitist hobby. Anyone else think there’s a slight level of disenfranchisement with magazine content and the average reader? Personally I haven’t felt connected to a magazine in years, I read the articles and think OK I’m not going to afford to take a Heli up a mountain 7 days straight.
That’s the one beautiful thing about all these blogs from all over the world. You have people show casing what snowboarding is to them. The Jon Burns interview on The Extreme Scene talks about it briefly, if you have some time it’s a pretty solid listen with a bunch of good points. So what is the ultimate point I’m getting at? It’s that big magazines have lost sight of what they need to connect with readers. Ultimately these small magazines like Arkade and All Us are far more interesting to read because they actually captivate the audience. We’re also at a point where we could see a full fledged switch to Internet media instead of holding out to print media.
What do you guys have to say about this? We’d love to hear what you have to say.
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Very good point! We are in a new(not even that new anymore) age; the Information Age. New media has completely run over and lapped old media.
Agreed. I think part of the issue is the changing demographics of snowboarding. The median age is now 37 and 65% have kids at home but the content hasn’t changed to meet the maturing audiance.
Skiing magazines have a variety of targets–some to a young freestyle crowd with railjam photos; others to family skiers with reviews of Aspen and tips to ski moguls.
Not that it would keep print in business (as all print/papers are struggling), but it might help.
truth is I rarely buy mags…and none this year (voted wrong)
I do have some “vintage” mags from 1995 and, true, they were 2-3X thicker with tons of very cool articles, almost all on everyday/average joe snowboarding topics.
The amount of snowboarding companies advertising in print back then was staggering…of course, less than 1% of them are still in business.
i read my transworlds everyday just cause it eases my mind. shred mags are huge and should never be forgotten. where else is a kid to get all his pictures to hang on his walls. espesh since i live in new york and we have a shitty 3 month season. btw have you ever been to the “fabulous” greek peak?
I never traveled further east than Kissing Bridge and that was a “Big Adventure”.
i usely buy a mag when im about to go on a trip. i used to subscribe to a couple of mags.
the reason that i dont subscribe anymore is that the content usely sucks. sucks big time. the last mag i bought was a transworld, shitty pictures, seriusly weak content and resort information that i would of found myself googling in 2 seconds.
(however the european mag onboard, my “regular” mag has much better articles, better layout far better pictures and is simply more interesting.)
nowadays i usely just check the blogs i like, and any resent trip reports on tgr forums and i get my stoke. cheaper, faster, more often and you get the firsthand experiances from the people who actually were there, lived it, and took the pictures…
Just so y’know, you rule.
Definitely dead.
Pretty solid article.
I’ve refused to advertise in any snow magazine (except for one ad, back in I think 2004) because it’s dead money.
Out of the snowboarders in your country (in my instance, Australia), how many buy the mag. Of those, how many see your ad. Then how many actually take notice and check your WWW. How many then buy something. Of course, it’s a function of your marketing, the lack of friction in your store, the “story” around the brand…but, the numbers start getting marginal.
The best marketing and PR spend is in creating great products that are useful and telling a great story.
Check our Jeff Jarvis (author of What Would Google Do) who bangs on about print media being dead (except in a couple of VERY niche markets). Boston Globe gone. SF Chronicle, gone. Warren Buffett “wouldn’t buy a newspaper at any price.”
Tim / Heresy
The immediacy of the internet renders is king over print. The Internet allows you to focus on your niche.