Peter Beal and Dougald MacDonald both have some interested perspectives on this issue and I’d like to expand further on the topic.

Personally, I still enjoy reading climbing magazines. I subscribe to Climbing, Urban Climber, and Rock & Ice even though I’ve been considering letting my subscriptions lapse at times. I don’t get climbing news from magazines as they’re usually about a month behind. I love the photography, but that can be found abundantly on the web as well. Climbing video is important to me and you can’t watch a video clip of a sick new project in a magazine either.

So why have I continued to subscribe and read them then? It’s likely the combination of (mostly) good articles, reviews, accident reports (I think these are important learning lessons), and technique/gear tips they provide. Unfortunately, all of these could be ported to an online format.

What I would love to see is some sort of hybrid model from the climbing magazines. They could take a lesson from a main stream publication like the Wall Street Journal. I initially subscribed to the WSJ while in business school and at about $300 per year for a subscription to the delivered daily paper, it got to be too much (both in cost as well as paper volume).

After business school, I found the Journal offered the entire paper online for $99 per year. A fraction of the cost, though still a bit pricey, but well worth it in my opinion to still be able to read all the content I wanted while not having to pay for paper I was never having the time to read. Their site even provides the ability to have links to every article in each day’s paper sent in an email. The subscriber controls what and how much they want to read.

I was never going to continue to pay regular price for the paper subscription especially after my student rates ended. By offering the online version at a substantially discounted price, they were able to capture what economists would call the consumer surplus.

Climbing magazines have the opportunity to embrace this as well. How many climbers who are not willing to pay $30 per year on a magazine subscription may be willing to pay $5 or $10 for this same content online? A small percentage I am sure, but realize this is still $5 more than these publishers would have received otherwise.

True, publishers risk that some of their paying subscribers will migrate to the online only version, but with such relatively low subscription numbers as a percentage of the climbing industry’s participants, I would think it would be a welcome portion of additional revenue.

I’m not sure there is anything the magazines can do content-wise at this point. What else can really be added to print magazines? The future is online and it will be interesting to see how the they handle these critical decisions over the next few years.

The post The Future of Climbing and Technology – Part 2 first appeared on All Climbing.

Rockclimbing.com, together with its sister sites Dropzone.com and BASEjumper.com, were purchased by NameMedia last year and operated by them since then. Unfortunately, as the economy worsened over the past few months it became less desirable for NameMedia to operate these sites given their business direction, which brought them to a difficult choice: find a suitable buyer or shut the sites down. Neither option was very desirable at this stage, so after much deliberation a third alternative was chosen, namely to sub-contract the operational responsibility back to the previous owners, Willem (user sangiro) and me. We’ve run these sites on a pretty tight budget before and we believe we can do so again, thus ensuring the longevity of the user communities.

What this means is that we will immediately resume all day-to-day management and operational responsibilities of the sites, while NameMedia will handle marketing and ad sales. NameMedia will remain the overall owner but we will have a minority interest in the value of the sites as a longer-term incentive for our efforts.

From the perspective of a good writer losing a full time gig this is really sad news. But while there are obvious financial difficulties across all industries right now, I’m disappointed with companies (not just climbing-related ones) using the economy to cover for all their business decisions. The economy has been deteriorating for a long time. This didn’t happen over night.

The economy is cyclic. Yes, it is bad now, but it will improve. Unfortunately, it’s never a good idea to rely on a single, major revenue stream. Advertising budgets have been drying up for a while now (but with great web page ideas, it is possible to formulate best strategy for marketing) and it would have been better to see a proactive move from NameMedia as opposed to this reactionary one (i.e. possibly cutting a writer back to part-time first).

At least the previous owners have passion for the business and stepped up the plate to keep it running instead of a complete shut-down. Sadly, this is what happened to Your Climbing (well, essentially – the new owners have been trying to sell again). I know one of the original founders of that site and while he was an outdoor enthusiast, he wasn’t a climber. So it was much more difficult (good or bad I guess) to keep a non-profitable site running.

The post RockClimbing.com Under New Management first appeared on All Climbing.

Alpinist released a press release which clarified a few points:

Founded by Christian Beckwith and Marc Ewing and operated in Jackson, Wyoming, until the autumn of last year, the quarterly Alpinist features a timeless, clean design with minimal ads. Publishing only the highest quality and most authentic climbing art and writing, Alpinist portrays the essence of the climbing life, inspired by an ethos of beauty, purity and style, and a dedication to help preserve the natural world that makes all adventures possible.

“My aim is to continue to explore the heart and soul of the climbing experience,” says Kennedy, “building on the incredible foundation Alpinist has developed over the last six years.” Widely known in the climbing community for his work at Climbing Magazine from 1974 to 1998, Kennedy served as an advisor to Alpinist since its inception in 2002. In over 35 years of climbing he has ventured far and wide, from pioneering Colorado ice climbs to lightweight alpine climbs in Alaska and the Himalaya, and he remains an active rock climber and backcountry skier today.

Dougald MacDonald, who initially wrote about the possibly of Alpinist targeting a broader audience than the previous incarnation, posted part of a conversation he had with Kennedy:

“I’d say the new Alpinist is going to be more like the old Alpinist than the old Climbing magazine. The trim size may end up like that of the Surfer’s Journal (9.5 x 11.5 inches rather than the current 9 x 12 inches), since that’s the more common “journal” size for publications printed in the U.S. The cover price will remain $12.95, although Alpinist will be offering special relaunch subscription offers with the first ‘new’ issue.”

So for those of you that were hoping Alpinist would carry on in a similar form, you may still have your wish.

I still stand by my skepticism of how this will work the second time around. The biggest loser here may be a competitor like Skram Media (publishers of Climbing and Urban Climber). For a relatively low selling price (especially for an established brand), I wonder why they didn’t just buy the assets and shelve them to prevent further competition.

The post Confirmations from the Publisher on the Alpinist Relaunch first appeared on All Climbing.

From the press release:

Alpinist, a premium quarterly celebrating mountaineering and the climbing life, closed its doors this fall, just prior to the release of Issue 26. The new owners, HOL, plan to release Issue 26 on March 1, and will honor all current subscriptions.

“Alpinist fits perfectly into our family,” says HOL president and publisher Jon Howard. “We feel climbers, mountaineers, and backcountry and freeheel skiers all share the same DNA. It’s, at times, about being bold; at times about being cautious. Kind of like how we do business.”

I have to agree with ClimbingNarc on that fact that it is a bit surprising to see Alpinist return without much modification to their model. Apparently, Height of Land Publications feels that they can achieve some publishing synergies with their other magazines. Only time will tell, but I wish them the best of luck.

The post Alpinist Magazine Returns first appeared on All Climbing.

In the end, the final bid was for $71,000. That’s the bad news for the debt holders and/or investors given the millions that were pumped in. On the positive side, the new owners evidently plan to keep the magazine. At least that’s what we were told since we only wanted the online assets anyway.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of the sale.
(via Mountain Project)

The post Alpinist Magazine Assets Finally Sold to High Bidder first appeared on All Climbing.