Outside EVERYTHING?

[The SnowShow]

Any recommendations on a current writer along the lines of Cahill, Proulx or Krakauer? Or did the internet kill quality and replace with quantity.
You promised us Mars and gave us TikTok

I don’t know any. The outdoor writing I see these days is shit.

[ASmileyFace]

Instagram/social media killed interesting short-form outdoor writing. There is still good long form stuff out there, but the Outside essay style writing of the past is long gone now.

[powdork]

I don’t know any. The outdoor writing I see these days is shit.

I dunno. Some of it is ok

[waxman]

Always hated Outside, they're probably the biggest publication ruining the outdoors with all their "10 secret places" and "guide to this" articles. There is something to be said for finding your own adventure, but gone are the days of just scouring old maps. Basically just one giant influencer without the part of having some chick in leggings bending over showing her huge ass.

I'd read it if I was in the dentist office or found one on a plane. As an industry member in wholesale and retail I hate their gear reviews. When I read them I can tell they actually never used the stuff (especially winter gear) just rehashed the companies marketing tripe.

[MTT]

I was wondering what this thread was about

Now I know. To those of you who have been negatively affected

Vibes

I get all my outside info from TGR

Who knows?

[fomofo]

Interesting article...

How To Save A Ski Town

And a previous take digging similar turf...

How I Lost My Town

[Bobcat Sig]

Outside is trash, so is Wes Siler. Their content is trash... all of it. It's a travel mag thinly veiled in outdoorsy shit for people who don't know or don't actually get outside.

While I understand what Outside is doing with the acquisition of different properties, I sure as fuck don't like it. When they snatched up Gaia GPS, the concern grew. I'm a paying subscriber prior to the acquisition, but I have no doubt that Outside's access to this new data set - much like TrailForks - probably won't lead to good things.

If you want some great reading on the outdoors; best pick up both Mountain Gazette and The Adventure Journal.

Oh and TGR was acquired by Conde Nast several years ago. This consolidation is nothing new.

[ASmileyFace]

I second the Mountain Gazette. It is really high quality writing. The format is a little cumbersome to read, but it is worth it for how beautiful the pictures are.

[Bobcat Sig]

Interesting article...

How To Save A Ski Town

And a previous take digging similar turf...

How I Lost My Town

To the first article and to save the clicks can be summed with the following; the last person in wants to build the biggest fence and people (and fucking Instagram) ruined everything. You're welcome.

[jacob_dbu]

Consolidation. It's a blessing and a curse. It brings A LOT of money and resource to projects that I do like. Trailforks, Gaia will all have many more resources at the same time they will be hamstrung by the wills of the investors who poured money into Outside (just a guess) so that they could buy all these. It also rewards the folks who put their blood sweat and tears into building these tools that we have all benefited from.

So it sucks, but it's also inevitable, but it also has some limited pros. You can't make money in journalism of any kind these days, especially as an independent outfit.

[Bobcat Sig]

Consolidation. It's a blessing and a curse. It brings A LOT of money and resource to projects that I do like. Trailforks, Gaia will all have many more resources at the same time they will be hamstrung by the wills of the investors who poured money into Outside (just a guess) so that they could buy all these. It also rewards the folks who put their blood sweat and tears into building these tools that we have all benefited from.

So it sucks, but it's also inevitable, but it also has some limited pros. You can't make money in journalism of any kind these days, especially as an independent outfit.

My concern is more around what Outside will extract out of the data sources of Gaia and TrailForks. And namely, further prostituting beloved areas and routes at the expense of #content and selling eyeballs.

The outdoors are already getting crushed with waves of new users. Stuff like this will only further amplify that trend.

[MakersTeleMark]

You can't make money in journalism of any kind these days, especially as an independent outfit.

I disagree. You just have to actually offer some meaningful content in order to monetize.

[MarcusBrody]

I'm a long time Outside subscriber, but it's basically for nostalgia now. I found Outside at the library in the mid 90s when I was probably 11 or 12 and was fascinated by the world it described (both geographically and activity wise). I agree with everyone else that it's gone downhill a lot.

[dunfree]

It’s kinda hard to replicate the new exotic world of the mid-90s now, shits changed, a lot.

They come to Cambodia for the cheap living, the cheap grass, the chance to flirt with a dangerous part of the world. But these days, young Western travelers have been paying the price for straying too far off the beaten path.By Philip Gourevitch

---

In the café of the Capitol Hotel, a graying heap of concrete near Phnom Penh’s Russian Market, scruffy Western travelers hoist bottles of Angkor beer, scribble in their notebooks, and trade banter with the pedicab drivers, bar girls, and beggars who spill in from the teeming sidewalks to work their hustles. It’s a familiar setting to anyone who’s traveled in Asia. In

nearly every city of note east of the Indus, there’s a place like the Capitol, or a street of such places: super-cheap guest houses that have been claimed as the local base camp by the backpacker tribe and transformed into outposts of late-beatnik progress. But in Cambodia, the scene is still a relative novelty. Only in the past few years has this tiny Southeast Asian kingdom,

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoo...e/death-ruins/ (published in 1995)

You can extend that to pretty much anything. Everest, Denali, Indo surf, etc etc. it’s been done, from every lens, in English.

[thefrush]

I was surprised to learn earlier this year that Outside was originally founded by William Randolph Hearst's grandson and Gerald Ford's son along with Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner.

[Viva]

Those cocksuckers lost me twenty five years ago when published several articles written by martin dugard that trashed a couple of friends. No accountability with that organization, nor any integrity.

Sent from my motorola edge plus using Tapatalk

[jacob_dbu]

I disagree. You just have to actually offer some meaningful content in order to monetize.

I think that is a pretty naive take. There’s basically three ways to “make money”. One is through ad revenue (based mostly on how many eyeballs), one is through directly selling your content (which people simply are not willing to pay for), and one is through selling another product for which your content is simply marketing content (more for individual content producers)

Outside chooses route 1 which is basically ad revenue through “product reviews” where other companies are paying a boatload for outside to write some junk.

To actually write good journalism and monetize that is very very difficult because people straight up don’t want to pay for it directly. There are companies trying to make that better (e.g. substack) but fundamentally the friction of payment and the cost of payment processing make it pretty infeasible to ask people to pay “per view”.

[jacob_dbu]

My concern is more around what Outside will extract out of the data sources of Gaia and TrailForks. And namely, further prostituting beloved areas and routes at the expense of #content and selling eyeballs.

The outdoors are already getting crushed with waves of new users. Stuff like this will only further amplify that trend.

Of course they will. They are a business looking to maximize revenue, growth, and profit at the expense of everything else. It sucks, but it’s also inevitable.

[Bobcat Sig]

Did you know that you can multi-quote? Crazy, I know.

I think that is a pretty naive take. There’s basically three ways to “make money”. One is through ad revenue (based mostly on how many eyeballs), one is through directly selling your content (which people simply are not willing to pay for), and one is through selling another product for which your content is simply marketing content (more for individual content producers)

Outside chooses route 1 which is basically ad revenue through “product reviews” where other companies are paying a boatload for outside to write some junk.

To actually write good journalism and monetize that is very very difficult because people straight up don’t want to pay for it directly. There are companies trying to make that better (e.g. substack) but fundamentally the friction of payment and the cost of payment processing make it pretty infeasible to ask people to pay “per view”.

I don't have the numbers, but The Ski Journal and similar pubs seem to be making it work. Quality content matters and there's a market for it. We - the collective we, the royal we - haven't paid for it with the move to digital because said content has eroded to crap, eg, Outside.

Of course they will. They are a business looking to maximize revenue, growth, and profit at the expense of everything else. It sucks, but it’s also inevitable.

Umm.. yah. I know. That's why I posted it.

[MakersTeleMark]

I think that is a pretty naive take. There’s basically three ways to “make money”. One is through ad revenue (based mostly on how many eyeballs), one is through directly selling your content (which people simply are not willing to pay for), and one is through selling another product for which your content is simply marketing content (more for individual content producers)

Outside chooses route 1 which is basically ad revenue through “product reviews” where other companies are paying a boatload for outside to write some junk.

To actually write good journalism and monetize that is very very difficult because people straight up don’t want to pay for it directly. There are companies trying to make that better (e.g. substack) but fundamentally the friction of payment and the cost of payment processing make it pretty infeasible to ask people to pay “per view”.

Your view is so narrow and antiquated. Do you know how many people pay for daily/weekly/monthly newsletter subscriptions about all sorts of stuff?

What about new media outlets like: https://coloradosun.com/about-us/

[alpinevibes]

Rant:

Wife won tickets to Warren Miller last night so we made a date night of it. Hadn’t seen a WM in 4-5 years but damn if it’s not just a downward spiral of paid content and mediocre skiing (by some great skiers) that I was expecting.

Outside+ takeover of the whole event and permeated into the movie. I fully realize that this is WM biz now, but the content is so weak compared to what you’re seeing posted online, continuously, from brands and individuals these days. No ski gear given away or raffled, no athletes or anything ski related besides the movie and the Majestic Heli table…

Just a big net cast from Outside for subs and cross-platform retention

[powdork]

You know you can have pay per view ads and pay per action ads all on a subscription based site. It's not one or the other.

[jacob_dbu]

Your view is so narrow and antiquated. Do you know how many people pay for daily/weekly/monthly newsletter subscriptions about all sorts of stuff?

What about new media outlets like: https://coloradosun.com/about-us/

Fair enough my response was not well thought out, but I guess my point was that it is difficult to make money in journalism more than it ever has been in part because crap like Outside can succeed through sheer marketing + eyeballs.

There’s so much content out there these days that without a conglomerate it’s hard to get eyeballs on content from small creators for long enough for people to open their wallets.

Not saying that it doesn’t happen, just that the media conglomerates are a clear path for investors to make money while simultaneously ruining it at the same time. What’s new.

[Yukonrider]

Just a big net cast from Outside for subs and cross-platform retention

I was in awe of how blatantly the entire movie was an advertisement, they didn't even try to hide it. I almost walked out after the Squaw bit, it read just like a trailer I'd see on Youtube.

There were just enough feel good stories in there to lace it all together with a couple semi cool turns.

/rant

[waxman]

I was in awe of how blatantly the entire movie was an advertisement, they didn't even try to hide it. I almost walked out after the Squaw bit, it read just like a trailer I'd see on Youtube.

There were just enough feel good stories in there to lace it all together with a couple semi cool turns.

/rant

That's been WM for pretty much ever hasn't it?