It’s a hard ask for us to “pay for the premium stuff” when it reads like ad copy to begin with.
Maybe that’s a chicken/egg thing?
Then you have the case where the better writers don’t write exclusively for one publication/media family, or they don’t even write* at all* anymore, they do podcasts
The hacks come in to fill the vacuum, and content suffers
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 ?
As I’ve posted before, since I don’t keep any sorts of Journal, and my Blog is long dead, this is where my “archives” lay
I’m sure that when I pass away, one of D’Kid’s friends will ask “Didn’t your Dad have a story about …?” and she’ll answer “Yeah, I don’t remember all of it, nor the exact way he told it, but it’s probably on Slowtwitch someplace. Look in the ‘Shit My Pants’ or ‘Weirdest Thing You’ve Seen’ threads”
But that’s probably NOT the content to which you’re speaking
https://dumbrunner.com/...runners-world-editor
“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
As long as James and Ronan are still there, I will keep paying for access to cyclingtips.
This is exactly right. The notion that we’re entitled to free content started with social media. It’s a similar scenario to people not wanting to pay for streaming and using VPNs. It ultimately hurts the quality of media available.
All publishing takes money—a plane ticket to France to cover the Tour is not free. Ad dollars have become harder and harder to come by as brands decided to plow dollars into paid social & digital, as well as content creation for owned channels. At the same time many publishers were slow to adapt to this and what they offered and continued to rely on ineffective banner ads and that kind of thing. Affiliate marketing then came along to replace some revenue but led to a decline in unbiased reviews (which was always somewhat of a thing; brands would threaten to pull ad dollars as a result of unfavorable coverage). It’s a combined spiral, and kudos for Slowman for a model that continues to work.
The Outside stuff is a little different. They created a data & customer ecosystem with digital & streaming publishing (from cycling to ski to food to health to yoga titles), BikeReg, FinisherPix, Gaia and so on. All stuff many use under one roof, essentially a giant data pool to monetize. But they’re struggling with a compelling offering and IMO, spinning wheels on stuff like NFTs. And what I don’t get is why they bought a bunch of bike titles and proceeded to tank them (Peloton, Beta, now CT?). In typical private equity flash, they have a fancy downtown Boulder office that the lights will stay on at at the expense of a lot of good people losing their job. Next year is going to be rough with he economy and some titles would have/will fold, but it seems very short sighted or perhaps cutthroat to have gobbled them up and eliminated competition.
So for a new bike review do you want to rely on a brand’s marketing job department to tell you about it, or have a mostly unbiased review?
Same for Kona or the Tour. Can you drop a newbie into covering the race with no real understanding of the athletes, course and history? Sure. Will the coverage most likely suck? Also sure.
Someone is creating the content and someone is paying for it, no matter where it originates. At least good stuff, there’s plenty of junk around for free. To your point of sourcing from others, that happens all the time with “stories†being written from a social post. That’s not editorial, it’s regurgitation for the sake of clicks.
https://dumbrunner.com/...runners-world-editor
“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’m curious what you mean by the bold?
So for a new bike review do you want to rely on a brand’s marketing job department to tell you about it, or have a mostly unbiased review?
Same for Kona or the Tour. Can you drop a newbie into covering the race with no real understanding of the athletes, course and history? Sure. Will the coverage most likely suck? Also sure.
Someone is creating the content and someone is paying for it, no matter where it originates. At least good stuff, there’s plenty of junk around for free. To your point of sourcing from others, that happens all the time with “stories†being written from a social post. That’s not editorial, it’s regurgitation for the sake of clicks.
I would challenge that this site has had better technical content, from equipment to training methodologies than any magazine, web site or other that charge. Yes, it has other challenges but in terms of content, there is some gold accumulated over the years. How do you keep the gold production going ?
I have seen better opinion in your 2022 cycling thread than a lot of websites with paywalls.
Sheppard the content, direct it, fan the flame…there are ways to do this.
Relying on editorial staff is not a model than can succeed moving forward IMO. It is too expensive to produce all the content needed to be competitive. They need to pick their battles and supplement with other means. I would be curious to know the financial relationship between things like Fast-Talk and Bobby&Jens podcasts
Same for being another FB group, or IG community
PS : I hope the Bobby and Jens show survives
Good to hear Eric!
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
Below is a pic of my first batch of hummus made from scratch. (Last week.). Uploaded from my cell phone.
Can you drop a newbie into covering the race with no real understanding of the athletes, course and history? Sure.
And the newbie/sports fan will have no media credential, no team/athlete/manager/ds access, and no early access to products and gear.
Calling Vaughters or Lefevere to talk about who’s on the team and doing what races in the coming year? Nope.
Getting quotes/photos from the pros immediately after they cross the finish line? Nope.
Getting samples or test equipment/apparel/gear for review before launch to inform audience decisions when products are available for purchase (which may be days/weeks later)? Nope.
Those Kona bike-counts? Nope.
Same for Kona or the Tour. Can you drop a newbie into covering the race with no real understanding of the athletes, course and history? Sure. Will the coverage most likely suck? Also sure.
Hunter S Thompson was sent Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race with no real idea about the sport, and came back with Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas. He was later sent to Hawai’i to cover the Honolulu Marathon and came back with The Curse Of Lono
But he was a very unique talent and individual
Cameron Crowe was just a kid who conned his way onto a tour bus with The Allman Brothers and came back with a gig at *Rolling Stone *
Chris MacDougall was sent to Copper Canyon to cover some race down there he’d never heard of - although he was a runner - and came back with Born To Run
So it can happen, but it’s rare
For sure, Hunter was a remarkable journalist. He also spend a year living with Hell’s Angels, which is probably more interesting than year living with a pro triathlete. A lot of drugs seemed to help.
But I’d characterize his writing as a little different than the reporting a Velonews or CyclingTips does. It’d be more of a long form fit for Outside than here’s who won what stage at the Tour. For a writer of his skill, news reporting would likely have been a fairly boring endeavor. Although now that I think of it, him reporting on who won a sprint could be highly entertaining.
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’m curious what you mean by the bold?
people seem to think there are millions, ok I jest, but the revenue rolling in the front door is less than most people think. You can be a brand partner with some of the biggest names in the endurance sports industry for way less than you think.
I get your point and am not totally disagreeing. And you also make a good one about the two podcasts. That’s a format that appeals to many. In theory, Outside aggregates audiences from as many titles as possible and then serves that content to them. More eyes/ears = more impressions = $. It’s the same as an editorial staff, just a different format. It still requires paying the talent, paying a production team and so on, then you need/have the aggregated audience for distribution and advertiser network that can access inventory.
That’d be a publisher model. I think ST is a little different, more like Pinkbike. Provide the platform, provide content & knowledge, but the difference from straight publishing is a big, engaged community via the forums. For example, where we can make up nicknames for pro riders. Hard hitting stuff like that (I kid, and agree there’s also boatloads of useful info within). That’s what sets ST apart, IMO. Hopefully Slowman or Eric will set me straight otherwise.
Good to hear Eric!
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
Below is a pic of my first batch of hummus made from scratch. (Last week.). Uploaded from my cell phone.
I tried uploading a picture (iPhone XR) using the image icon in the ‘advanced editor’ and got this message:
Ironically the above image is a screenshot that is 367 KB. So I guess I’m confused what the cutoff is
Good to hear Eric!
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
Below is a pic of my first batch of hummus made from scratch. (Last week.). Uploaded from my cell phone
I tried uploading a picture (iPhone XR) using the image icon in the ‘advanced editor’ and got this message:
Ironically the above image is a screenshot that is 367 KB. So I guess I’m confused what the cutoff is
the trouble is when you take a pic with your phone and try to upload it directly, without optimizing the photo for our site. if you want to point to an image you host elsewhere it can be as big as you want. we don’t want to host on our servers tens or hundreds of thousands of 4mb images. we’re already paying for the bandwidth to transmit those huge images that you point to. hosting them as well, no thankee. so you take my hummus as an example (mm, yummy!), i took that image with my phone, downsized it in photoshop, and uploaded it. i changed the image size to 800px wide (no magic to that, 600px is fine, 1000px, but more than 1000px and you start to bump up against that quarter-mb max). i saved it as a jpg, medium quality, and that makes it about a 115kb image.
Resizing an image can actually be done in the web browser directly. You don’t need photoshop, it could be done directly from your site. Happy to share code or do it if it helps.
Off topic… people always mention Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as HST’s “best” work. I’ve always thought that Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, is head and shoulders better.
Resizing an image can actually be done in the web browser directly. You don’t need photoshop, it could be done directly from your site. Happy to share code or do it if it helps.
the site resizes the image already. i don’t know of any way that the site can upload a smaller version of the image, that is, upload that image in a much reduced fileweight. you’re saying that you know how to do that?
Maybe that conversation should go somewhere else but yes. I can select an image and resize (& re-compress) it before it gets uploaded.
Sometimes it allowed me to resize images and other times it doesn’t. For example I uploaded the picture below and it asked if I wanted it:
Small (133 KB)
Medium (422 KB)
Large (1.3 MB)
Actual Size (9.1 MB)
So I picked medium and it worked:
However when it try and upload a screenshot from my phone it gives me the following options:
Small (3.7 MB)
Medium (3.7 MB)
Large (3.7 MB)
Actual Size (3.7 MB)
So none of them work. So not sure if there is some way to get around that with my phone or with the message board (ie why does it allow me to resize a pic from my phone but not a screenshot)
