In his monthly Viewpoint column, outdoors writer, broadcaster and mountain walker Cameron McNeish asks where Outdoor magazines can survive.
A magazine dropped through my letterbox the other day. After a cursory glance at the front cover I put it on top of a pile of other outdoor mags that I subscribe to.
I must admit I laid it on the magazine pile with something of a guilty conscience and promised myself, for the umpteenth time, that at some point I would try and get round to reading them all. But do you know what? I probably won’t.
Now this might sound strange coming from someone with a background in magazines like my own. I started my own outdoor magazine, Footloose, in 1981 and thereafter edited Climber Magazine and The Great Outdoors (TGO) Magazine for 25 years. I still edit two outdoor magazines – Scottish Walks and Scottish Cycling, although both these titles are slightly different models of magazine publishing.
So why does someone with a long-term background in outdoor magazine publishing suddenly become bored with them? Probably for the same reason I haven’t bought a newspaper in a couple of years. I now get all the information, news and inspiration I need, things that I used to get from papers and magazines, from the Internet.
Websites like this one, social media and a handful of blogs serve my purposes these days, and they are all free. You also don’t need to chop down an Amazonian rain forest to provide the paper…
At this point let me add a small addendum.
I’m now fairly long in the tooth when it comes to hill walking and backpacking and while I’m always happy and eager to learn new skills most of the ‘beginner’ stuff I read in the magazines doesn’t really interest me any more.
Neither do walking routes in most of England and Wales. I’ve nothing against walking south of the Scottish border and I’m passionately fond of the Lake District but I just don’t get the chance to go there very often.
I have all the gear I need to last me into my dotage so I’m not tempted by gear reviews, and I find that those issues that do interest me, largely conservation politics, are not covered by the current crop of walking and climbing magazines. It would appear controversy isn’t allowed any more…
As I read this over I’m aware much of what I’ve written sounds like the rant of an old fart ex-editor who isn’t comfortable with change, and there may be an element of truth in that, so I’m prepared to accept that many folk, particularly those who are new to outdoor activities like climbing or hillwalking, may well enthusiastically devour everything that’s published in today’s outdoor titles. I was like that myself once, but sadly, circulation figures would suggest that more and more of us are abandoning print magazines (and newspapers) and now favour other sources of information.
Before I try and identify why that’s the case let me say a quick word about circulations. Only three titles in the UK, in the outdoors sector of climbing and walking, are Audit Bureau of Circulation audited. Trail, Country Walking and The Great Outdoors publish their audited circulation figures, the others don’t. Why? Because they sell very few copies.
Most magazine publishers get regular retail analysis from their distributers and that includes sales in all the big retail chains. It becomes very clear which magazines sell copies and which ones don’t. Unsurprisingly, the big three walking titles are the only ones with reasonable figures.
Unfortunately those figures are dropping, substantially in the case of Trail and CW and less so with The Great Outdoors, but that magazine starts from a much smaller circulation base anyway.
With circulation figures falling like leaves from an autumn tree an interesting trend is beginning to appear. Major gear manufacturers and retailers appear to be courting bloggers and website owners, rather than print journalists.
Last summer WL Gore, makers of Gore-Tex fabrics, took a whole bunch of bloggers to Switzerland, courted them, wine and dined them and kitted them out in new gear, all for free.
Also, PR companies regularly approach the owners of popular websites promising special deals for their readers with their clients, who tend to be outdoor retailers and manufacturers. Do these marketing professionals know something the rest of us don’t?
I suspect they might. Every day more and more outdoor folk are blogging, and some of them do it extremely well. Google Analytics suggest that many of them are getting very large viewing figures, or Unique Users, to use the Internet jargon.
There are some excellent websites too, and you can tailor social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to bring you the kind of information you particularly want to read.
I find Twitter to be particularly useful, especially when it comes to issues like windfarm planning proposals and the like and there are some very good blogs out there too, produced by some talented writers. There are perhaps half a dozen that I look at regularly but for the moment I’ll name three of them.
Ed Douglas’ website, www.calmandfearless.com is a kind of outdoor arts and literary chronicle, and offers an antidote to the dwindling amount of column inches that magazines offer for reviewing outdoor books, films and photography.
Andy Howell’s “Must Be This Way…” trekking and backpacking pages are well researched, well written and refreshingly honest. So too is John Appleby’s Footless Crow although it’s more climbing oriented.
What I particularly like about these three blogs is that they are strong on opinion, something that tends to be lacking from our walking and climbing magazines nowadays. I don’t always agree with the opinions offered on these blogs, but that’s no bad thing. It’s always good to have my prejudices challenged! It makes me think, and weigh up the arguments in a more informed way.
So, do outdoor magazines have a future? I think they probably do, but in a much more limited way than in the past. I’ve no doubt circulations will continue to fall and since all our outdoor titles are owned by fairly large publishing companies it’s only a matter of time before the number-crunchers start querying the financial returns.
And that’s the vital factor. Money. Magazines have to make a profit, and few magazine publishers are willing to spend massive amounts on websites unless they can make money from them. At the moment the public has become used to getting information from websites for nothing – few people react well to having to pay for online material.
It’s also becoming increasingly difficult for outdoor magazines, with their limited circulation figures, to get onto the shelves of the major retailers. Indeed, some of those retailers now charge for shelf space – more expenditure for hard-pressed publishers.
Interestingly enough, the two magazines I now look after, Scottish Walks and Scottish Cycling are free. With a distribution of 70,000 both titles reach a far bigger audience than any of the pay-for magazines, and this is what attracts advertisers. It’s a publishing model that appears to work – look at the success of free newspapers like Metro. It’s a blueprint that could perhaps work for other outdoor titles?
Another idea that could work is for publishers to create better websites in partnership with subscription-only print titles. Cut out the middle-men – the distributors and the increasingly expensive High Street newsagent chains. The problem is that the website content should differ from the print magazine content and much of that content would have to be paid for.
I rather like the blueprint set by the mountain bike magazine Singletrack. You can subscribe online to the print mag only, or to a downloadable e-magazine. When you subscribe you become a Premium user and get access to loads of new stuff on the website that ‘ordinary’ browsers are denied. It’s magazine and website working in tandem, and if outdoor magazines are to survive, then that’s the route they’ll have to follow.