Recognizing my source - the Triathlonish (which is terrific - and you should subscribe)…
Outside Inc (ie. Outside Magazine, Triathlete, Velo, Women’s Running, etc) has laid off about 25 people in editorial — including, it sounds like, a lot of the Outside Mag staff — and purchased a travel booking site (with its ~80 staff) in the same week. So, make of that what you want. (Twitter/Denver Business Journal)
You know, I loved Outside magazine and was a very long time subscriber. I’m sure that the stories inspired me to be involved in multiple - ahem - outside - activities. But the shift to a collection of websites and blocking (nearly) all access from non-subscribers? Well, maybe that is what it is in the 2020’s, but me, personally? I went from a subscriber (print) to a non-subscriber (in any form). The print product was (is?) super weak compared to even 10 years ago. The online presence has the potential for rapidity of info that print can never achieve.
This sounds like the final stake in the heart of Outside. RIP.
Interestingly, I feel better about it’s prospects with this move. They can actually make some money if they get the travel inventory matched up with their feature videos and articles.
Seems like it makes perfect sense to provide a way to book an adventure at the place you’re writing about.
I’d rather be in the content/excursion broker service than be in the content/advertiser business.
I wrote this over on LinkedIn – with the understanding that I am not dunking on the efforts of those at Triathlete today.
But Outside, as it aspires to move further into these content niches, seems to be forgetting that the outdoor market desperately craves for authenticity and experience for content. And when their online media is essentially their customer acquisition for their now integrated verticals (race registration, Inntopia, etc.), it seems like a miss.
That said, it also would not surprise me if those integrated vertical teams were now also responsible for top and mid funnel content that will appear on those publications. And the question is whether or not that will feel far too sales-ish for customer tastes (heck, we run into that with product reviews these days for stuff from non-partners).
Trust in content is at an all-time low. Removing some of the experts from your team when the whole model is built on maximal funnel filling from the publications seems like it will further erode that trust. It feels like Outside is in that place where they are relying solely on the brand itself to provide the equity/trust to whomever writes for it, when really that trust flows the other way around.
I think where the benefit comes into play is nearly every destination vacation type place is worth going to for someone. So the writing just has to identify that segment and speak to them and make clear who it’s not for, if it’s the kind of place that will ellicit polarized opinions.
The reality is, every article they write about an adventure or sport etc taking place somewhere gets some people googling about going there for their next trip. Might as well be the one that sells the trip.
I think gear reviews while similar are more transparently product based. If someone wrote about running the grand canyon and that experience behind the training and activity etc and the shoe was not “the story” but just a component of all the other info in the story like the poles used, nutrition used, vest used, shorts used, chaffing cream used, hotel or campsite stayed in along the way, along with the main info about the route, shuttling service, and the day of the run, I think they’d accomplish the following:
Get people googling about running the grand canyon themselves.
Get them considering training plans
Get them looking at what gear they might want to get etc
So why not be one or more of the businesses in that value chain that benefits?
Obviously that’s easier said than done when writers are faced with trying to pump something up and have to repeat the cycling day in and day out.
I have recently seen a lot of IG posts from cyclists lamenting the layoff of Betsy Welch. She is very well respected in the cycling industry. Hope she finds another avenue to carry on with her trade
The day we post something written by AI is the day I hang up my writing hat. (I am not opposed to some of our writers using Grammarly or other AI tools to help their writing, but you get the idea.)
And we appreciate your continued readership and forum contributions.
Hard to imagine any other outcome here. I can see the potential value of selling the adventure travel that you are writing about. I just don’t see how they will do the engaging writing that is required to make that travel exciting after letting go most of their writers. Maybe they are planning for AI writing, I don’t know. But firing the folks who make your product interesting / unique / desirable and - at the same time - hiring travel agents (?). This is not going to end well. But Outside’s decision / strategy / path does not align with my interest, so they are not getting my $. But others are different, and this may be a bigger revenue generator than in-depth, well-written investigative reporting of the latest Himalayan climbing situation, or the nuances of professional surfing or how the most recent AT FKT was achieved. I don’t see the mad rush for adventure travel in the absence of writers who can generate that sort of appealing journalism. But maybe the AI robot writers will surprise.
I am just speculating here, maybe they will use more external resources than an internal writing staff. I wrote once for them and they have called and asked for input on other articles and they seem well setup to use this approach. Just speculating here…
They mentioned this on Escape Collective. All of the articles now (not just at Outside but lots of that type) are affiliated links. Buy a product from a link and Outside gets a cut. Hard to take their opinion seriously when they get paid to say something is good
Agree. I thought their early years had great content. I liked their gear reviews and would avidly read their coverage of activities I didn’t necessarily do (e.g. surfing). Was a subscriber for a few years.
Then they went through various ownership changes since then. It’s very different now. I miss their old days.
Yeah, I was going to mention DCRainmaker as another affiliate link monster.
But, that said – there are ways to do affiliate links and still offer your own opinion on the product (good, bad, indifferent). E.g., sometimes a product isn’t going to work for me, but I can identify a market for it, and might say as much in the course of a review. It’s rare when I think something is purely shit and won’t work for anyone.
Yeah, I’d say there’s a bit of a key difference in how I do affiliate links, compared to most, namely in that I don’t have any direct affiliate relationships with the maker of the product. I have links to Amazon/REI, and a couple of others, but that’s it. Meaning, I don’t care what you what you purchase (model/manuf), as long as you purchase something (and on Amazon, that could be toilet paper). More pointedly though, that removes any incentive where one manuf offers a higher commission over another one. The way Amazon/REI/etc all work, it’s just based on super-general categories.
I think I’ve pretty clearly demonstrated I just don’t care about upsetting the affiliate revenue apple-cart. I’ll stick a link at the end of a review, but it has zero impact on a good review or bad review. A product sucks, I’ll say so straight-up in the summary, right above that link. Still, if someone wants to buy it…go forth.
Obviously, I’m keenly aware a lot of affiliate sites don’t operate that way. And ultimately, having affiliate links is a balance in keeping things open. Ad revenue simply doesn’t cut it, at least for me being an independent site that doesn’t have a sales team behind it. Likewise, I could go entirely towards the Escape model of a paywall, but I’m not convinced that would work for a tech review-focused site, at scale.
