9// Trail Running Loses Another Magazine

A Trailmix of news, quotes and ramblings about trail media

Hey pals,

Welcome to all those that joined from LinkedIn (Thank you Simon!). The topics i write about would probably work well on LinkedIn, so I really should start a page on there… but I’m hardly the most frequent Tweeter so I’ll probably be an even worse LinkedIn poster… we’ll see.

For all the newbies, this is Trailmix, a newsletter that covers the trail running media landscape. Each week I alternate between an original piece of writing or interview, and a commentary on the latest news in media.

Media companies across the board are starting to reveal the effects the pandemic and shifting media behaviours are having on their businesses. This week we have two chunky, albeit sad, topics that demonstrate just that- the further decline of print journalism in trail running and cuts to Outside, the publisher of Trail Running.

Hope you all have a great week :)

Matt

The trail running world lost another print magazine last week when Bauer declared that this current issue of Trail Running Magazine will be its last.

In their statement on LinkedIn Bauer mention that they will be making Trail Running Magazine an online publication, similar to the pivot Trail Runner (US) made earlier this year.

In emails with Paul Larkins, Editor in Chief of Trail Running Magazine, he lamented the loss of the print magazine, especially when the trail running industry is ‘booming’. Despite this growth, Paul said the main motivation to cut the print edition was that printing costs were getting too high and that the content they were publishing in print was online for free.

These reasons are becoming a common refrain by print publishers in recent years, but this has been a trend that was years in the making. In the UK, magazine advertising revenue has fallen by £500M in the past 10 years and consumer spending on magazines has more than halved. UK magazine publishers rely more on one-off buys from the newsstand than subscriptions, so when COVID removed access to these stands, the decline of the UK print industry hit hyper speed.

It’s important to lay out this context because the decline of trail running magazines are not entirely a reflection of the state of the trail running media industry, but of media as a whole. The economics just simply don’t work anymore for a company the size and scale of Bauer or Outside to be publishing print magazines and be reliant on advertising to fund it. That’s why I was so fascinated to hear about Like the Wind from Simon last week - print media can still work in running, on a smaller scale, with a content strategy and business model centred on the dedicated runner.

For Trail Running Magazine, Paul pointed towards the 85K instagram following the magazine has and will be working on converting them to frequent visitors to their online website.

—

Outside let go of another round of staff this week after already reducing their headcount by 15% earlier this year.

The cuts came to editorial and content teams. The most effected verticals is unclear but it appears to have hit the cycling division from what former Editor in Chief of Cycling Tips, Caleb Fretz, tweeted. Zoe Rom, Editor in Chief of Trail Runner confirmed via email that the cuts did not effect the trail running or running section of Outside.

In an email to staff CEO Robin Thurston blamed poor management decisions and everyone’s current favourite scapegoat, the macro environment. He insisted the cuts needed to be made to make Outside profitable and mentioned that they were seeking venture funding to keep the company afloat (good luck with that when VC investments in media is at a five year low).

It wasn’t long before the outdoor industry Twitterati were quick to add that these cuts were self-inflicted citing Outside’s venture into NFTs, the firing of some of each publication’s lead writers and growing too big too soon.

All of this is likely true - as i mentioned in my piece on Outside, Robin has made a big bet that becoming the biggest media company in the outdoor industry by bundling media and tech in one subscription package is the key to building a sustainable media business. Indeed, bundling is the current driving force to NYT’s subscription success, so if it works there why not here?

Well, to me, it appears Robin doesn’t understand the audiences he’s acquired and is sprinting to an IPO.

He’s forgetting that advertising is his main source of revenue and to get advertisers you need an audience. To get an audience you need to create great content. To create great content you need great writers, videographers, photographers and podcasters. These experts come at a cost.

Robin’s moves focus on everyone but their current in-market audience. I’m not going to knock the premise of the NFT project - to incentivise more people to go outdoors through a new method, in turn increasing your addressable market. Cool. But the execution focuses on people who are not currently readers of the media companies they’ve acquired. These readers do not need an incentive to go outdoors.

Acquiring multiple companies in the same vertical. Once again, i get the premise of monopolising a category and building efficiencies in the backend so that content production is cheaper. But efficiency does not equal effectiveness. Your audiences are most likely reading each of these and will notice similarities and reductions in quality content.

Building efficiency, aiming for profit and growing your addressable audience are all activities a media company needs to do today to survive in what is becoming a ruthless market. I admire Robin’s innovative attempt to reinvent the media business model (it sometimes seems media companies repeatedly do the same things and for some reason expect different results). Yet the pace and timing of these changes reek of mismanagement, not of intelligent, thoughtful actions.

If Ari’s reports that Outside are gearing up for an IPO are true, then this might not be the last of the bad news we hear from Outside over the next couple of years.