Outside continues to tear down the cycling news websites they have purchased
Back in May Dane Cash, Ben Delaney, and Greg Kaplan were let go. Now this week Caley Fretz, Dave Rome, Matt de Neef and Daniel Benson are among the group of those let go. From what I saw in the CT forum is 12% of the team has been let go.
James Huang, Iain Trellor and a few other good ones are still around CT. But it seems like things are unfortunately going downhill. Visited the site daily and never missed a podcast. After all this I fee like I’m done with both.
i’ve never been a fan of velonews anyway but very sad to see the continuing gradual degradation of cyclingtips which until recently was in my mind far and away the best cycling news website. i’m currently a veloclub subscriber - its the only time i have ever paid for a news site, despite that fact that it doesn’t really get me anything extra, i just wanted to support a great site. i can’t see myself renewing that again.
CT’s RSS feed hasn’t been working for a while either which limits my visibility of their articles, not that there have been many recently (partly due to the off season but i suspect only partly, the old CT would have found interesting things to write about).
CT’s RSS feed hasn’t been working for a while either which limits my visibility of their articles, not that there have been many recently (partly due to the off season but i suspect only partly, the old CT would have found interesting things to write about).
That one, at least, isn’t from malicious corporate decisions. They changed the URL a few weeks back to www.cyclingtips.com/feed from the oddball aggregator URL they were using before. My reader (NetNewsWire) still only loads the first image in the post/article (barring stuff like Twitter embeds), but it works fine otherwise. They didn’t exactly publicise it, though; I only saw it in the internal VeloClub support Slack channel.
CT’s RSS feed hasn’t been working for a while either which limits my visibility of their articles, not that there have been many recently (partly due to the off season but i suspect only partly, the old CT would have found interesting things to write about).
That one, at least, isn’t from malicious corporate decisions. They changed the URL a few weeks back to http://www.cyclingtips.com/feed from the oddball aggregator URL they were using before. My reader (NetNewsWire) still only loads the first image in the post/article (barring stuff like Twitter embeds), but it works fine otherwise. They didn’t exactly publicise it, though; I only saw it in the internal VeloClub support Slack channel.
yeah, i always put that down to simple reduced competency
thanks - at least now i can easily see that there is nothing worth reading
I wouldn’t mind if one of them was the ability to upload a pic from my phone to a post without hosting it elsewhere. Could never convince slowman to do that. Haha
I know we journos are not a popular bunch, by and large (and we bring a lot of that on ourselves as a group) …
But these are great people and excellent colleagues who have done a fine job. Cycling is the poorer for them not writing about it.
Outside continues to tear down the cycling news websites they have purchased
Back in May Dane Cash, Ben Delaney, and Greg Kaplan were let go. Now this week Caley Fretz, Dave Rome, Matt de Neef and Daniel Benson are among the group of those let go. From what I saw in the CT forum is 12% of the team has been let go.
James Huang, Iain Trellor and a few other good ones are still around CT. But it seems like things are unfortunately going downhill. Visited the site daily and never missed a podcast. After all this I fee like I’m done with both.
We have some exciting things we are working on too
Is it accurate to say ST is unique in that a very large percent of its content is written by its readers ?
Doesn’t this make a much leaner organization, less susceptible to advertiser activity highs and lows ?
I would say it is more or a community engagement site then all the others… We dont just “PUSH” information and news to our community. We talk about things. Together.
“Sometimes it’s like you have a paywall around your heart,†Meredith Logue, 27, told her boyfriend of eight months, Dickie Greenleaf, 33. “And I feel like I’ll never get unlimited access.â€
Greenleaf is an editor at Runner’s World magazine; Logue’s remark was an apparent reference to that publication’s decision to put a paywall around some of its online content.
“I don’t want just bits and pieces of you, Dickie,†Logue said, sobbing. “I want it all, I want the *premium *content. And you keep it locked away!â€
It’s regrettable to lose the coverage, but I’ve scanned open articles on Velonews time to time but largely when hitting a paywall am like “pshhhh, nope” when I can click over to road.cc for free.
Thing is, if there was a monthly glossy physical mailer with some cool full page photos from events or something, sure…but some of the stuff I’ve seen these places the photography and content is not what I’d consider pay worthy.
Instead, I blew about $75 on a “new old stock, lost in the book store” copy of 40 Years of Cycling Photography. A superb spend for what it is.
If someone sold a $50-ish year-in-review book for pro cycling or something (or for runners), I would buy that.
These paywall site things I often just shake my head.
I would say it is more of a community engagement site then all the others… We dont just “PUSH” information and news to our community. We talk about things. Together.
thanks. Always interesting to see where things are going.
“Sometimes it’s like you have a paywall around your heart,†Meredith Logue, 27, told her boyfriend of eight months, Dickie Greenleaf, 33. “And I feel like I’ll never get unlimited access.â€
Greenleaf is an editor at Runner’s World magazine; Logue’s remark was an apparent reference to that publication’s decision to put a paywall around some of its online content.
“I don’t want just bits and pieces of you, Dickie,†Logue said, sobbing. “I want it all, I want the *premium *content. And you keep it locked away!â€
The problem is someone has to write all that content, both free and paywall. The paywall is the way those writers get paid. Ad dollars aren’t as great as most think they are.
The problem lies with us, for not paying for premium stuff, and to a degree with the sites for depending on the premium model/not coming up with a model more people are willing to shell out cash for. Although I don’t what that better model looks like
I agree, though I don’t think that’s necessarily true at CT - the VeloClub system seemed (from the outside, and as a member) to be robust and successful, and these changes have more to do with the Venture Capital Vultures at Outside than anything else.
the VeloClub system seemed (from the outside, and as a member) to be robust and successful, and these changes have more to do with the Venture Capital Vultures at Outside than anything else.
Yeah, maybe they fired the wrong 12%. My first beef with Outside was when they forced CyclingTips to pull an article that lightheartedly poked fun at Peter Sagan’s NFTs. I think the title was something like, “If Peter Sagan Can’t Sell a Cycling NFT, No One Can.”
Presumably to protect their surreal NFT marketplace “Outside.io.” - “And everything’s designed for less screen time and more outdoor time.” Uh-huh.
I presume this isn’t going well given right now they have appear to have two NFTs for sale, one for ~$6 and one free. Maybe the truth of the CT article title hit a little too close to home.
I wonder if the NFT game not going well is what’s triggering the gutting of the content creators.
It’s an interesting question, how to pay professional journalists and professional artists in the digital age, I don’t think Outside has found the right combination there. (And I had subscriptions to both Outside+ and VeloClub)
The problem is someone has to write all that content, both free and paywall. The paywall is the way those writers get paid. Ad dollars aren’t as great as most think they are.
The problem lies with us, for not paying for premium stuff…
The problem lies with us, for not paying for premium stuff,
Maybe generally, but referring to the subject of this thread, I believe the CyclingTips VeloClub was a success, and a pioneer in a paywall for cycling content that still allowed reasonable access to free content. Combined with high-quality ads. Cyclingnews and Velonews followed suit.
Once CT was purchased by Outside what seemed to be an success seemingly started to go downhill.
