"Writing isn't bad but the content is useless." No Doubt!
It was incorrectly reported in the magazine last year that Leroy Grannis had passed away, anyone worth their salt keeps tabs on legends like Leroy, the old guard would have know who to call immediately to verify or deny such a story
I say it with some sadness that magazines could compete
I disagree with Greg that "print is dead"...it's still stumbling along. What I can't tell yet is if it is asking for help or just randomly saying "Brains! Give me your brains!"...
Magazines could still compete, and it's all our loss if they fail or flail. Sadly, surfing isn't much different than anything else now. The same story is being played out all through print media, all media really. Economic boom time and everybody chases the money, sales and consolidations and the resulting debts have to be serviced, new tech (internet) starts eating into things. Virtually all media has chosen to do battle with the internet, and instead of focusing on what makes them differerent they all seem to be chasing what makes the internet strong...a very fatal strategy in my opinion. In the general media you have the internet taking journalistic content from print, radio, and tv. As the net gets more attention the revenues of the actual content providers goes down, making it harder for them to do their jobs and keep their doors open. Breaking news on CNN now almost always features several minutes of coverage consisting of live shots of people looking at the internet. Eventually this kind of cycling will result in...well...the kind of quality content a lot of surf magazines produce. All the rubber bones starving dogs can afford to buy.
Eventually there will be so few outlets that the ad buy outlet opportunities will be limited, reducing costs for advertisers. The internet allows unlimited capacity to sell ad space. A careful read of a lot of environmental journalism will show a very distinct trend of declaring paper production the worst use of timber. Political correctness via environmentalism may soon dictate that all paper is bad or "unnecessary". It's a short hop from there to having the delivery systems become the keys to the kingdom...dependent on money, access, electricity, etc. And maybe you thought $13 for Surfer's Journal was expensive...
Surfer’s Journal Surfer’s Path and NALU Underground are the only mags I pick up. A few Christmas ago
I recieved the Journals for a year, man that was nice.