Surfers offer to buy iconic surf mags back from corporate master!
Here’s what you might call a switcharoo. Instead of an investment firm swinging their millions at a publishing house, the surfers who run Surfing Life and White Horses for Pacific Star Network, the company that bought Morrison Media with its suite of titles (Frankie, Surfing Life, White Horses, Smith Journal) for ten million dollars in November 2014, have made an offer to buy back the two surf mags.
As I write, the board of Pacific Star are meeting to discuss an offer that would put White Horses into the hands of its creator and designer/editor Graeme Murdoch, Rob Bain (sales, former surf star) and Morrison Media’s former general manager, Craig Sims, a South African who once owned Zig Zag magazine before moving to Australia. Craig would also become the sole owner of Surfing Life magazine.
Buying two print titles? Did not the memo about print being dead reach his desk?
Would Sims’ next investment be a franchise of blacksmiths or video stores?
Sims ain’t wearing rose coloured glasses.
“We’re passionate and we love what we do,” says Sims, “and we know we’ll have our work cut out for us.”
Surfing Life‘s current editor Ryan Jones says the mag might miss a deadline, if the changeover happens, but it’ll be biz as usual in a month or so. Jones says it’s likely the mags will be run by a gang of contributors working wherever, meeting around deadline time, then dispersing back to their home offices. This works on two levels. You lose the weight of full-time salaries and all their associated costs and the workers can choose whether they want to work or surf.
It’s all very share economy. People power etc.
There’ll be an announcement either today (offer accepted), tomorrow (counter offer made) or Monday (counter offer rejected).
Whatever happens, I think it’s the most wonderful thing ever to see a bunch of workers having a swing in the real world, escaping the yoke of their corporate masters etc.
Prints not dead!!
I envision a Surfing Life of White Horses future
i hope it works for them. i’ve ordered a couple single copies of white horses and it’s a fun read for sure.
Is that Steph on White Horse? Holy crap that is a beautiful shot.
That is honestly one of the most wonderful surf pics I’ve ever seen.
Good on them!
Have you begun negotiations down at SURFER yet? When does the revolution come to SoCal? I’ve heard there are hoards lined up in both Venice, Florida and Venice, California voicing their support with automatic weapons and super-8 cameras, respectively.
Gra Murdoch is fuckin hilarious. Best wishes.
The start of the Murdoch media empire.
sounds like the bell is tolling for a few surfing mags.
Perhaps I’m overly optimistic, but I think there is a place for magazines that aren’t the mouthpieces of the machine. I may be giving them too much here, but I like to imagine the wider surf community as people who are interested in reading about all the different aspects of their community. Focussing so heavily on the pros and on the machinations of the WSL has little, if anything to do with the average joe who surfs. In my mind, the greatest failing of today’s surf mags is that they continue to peddle stuff that the vast majority of surfers just aren’t interested in. Perhaps this will mean that some fall (Surfing Life?) while other (White Horses?) rise…
but look at what gets the most comments here and elsewhere: machinations of the wsl. surfies are the best groupies.
Is this not the bowels of the surf community? Where the decaying come to loath! Always pleased when banter goes off topic blossoms into a real conversation..
How offensive! I proudly consider myself at least a part of the gall bladder or bile duct, if not the esophagus, of the surf community.
The two biggest American titles cover the average joe and jill scene pretty damn well.
Sure.
no?
If I wanted to watch average people surf I’d put a gopro on my board.
Surfing Life pallbearers.
white horsies is hopefully niche enough to be a subsistence farmer. i hope so, gra seems like a lovely chappie trying to be happy. an earnest little piece of slow media in an accelerated society.
Alvin Toffler predicted it 30 years ago.
rip Alvin.
White Horses will rise to the top…….Surfing Life just seems like the internet a month too late. And the whole: if -you’re -a -Surflng Life -writer -you’re -automatically -a -pro -surfing -WSL -cheerleader seems too quaint to pull off in this century. It looks too transparently like PR. The internet wrecked that game.
Spot on with the Surfing Life analysis, the now previous editor filled that description perfectly.
would love to have more resources in the english language to use some good ol’sarcasm, but i guess i cant’…
Help keep Gra’s great mag ” white horses” alive, do your self a favour a buy up some copy’s if they manage to pull this off.
Interesting times indeed, but I think this is great news for both Surfing Life and White Horses.