Bad Boy surf journalist’s shock update on Aussie icon’s future 

World champ Shaun Tomson says, "Holy yes, Relic no. This mag is alive."

It has been a long nine months since Nick Carroll, the “bad boy” of legacy surfing journalism, was on these pages.

You’ll remember he, and his very talented photography sidekick Hannah Anderson, were stuck in the guts in a shock cull by wave forecasting website Surfline.

Carroll, who is sixty-six, had been named as Surfline’s Australian editor, a position that opened up after the surf forecasting giant bought Coastalwatch for one million dollars in 2019. 

Until he shifted to Surfline, Nick Carroll was a regular in BeachGrit’s comment section, his lightly hectoring older brother tone, often uncharacteristically candid, producing some of his best work. 

Carroll’s purist approach to a sport he’d been immersed in for fifty years were clear in,

Nick Carroll: “Tom is generous with me, yet I’m rarely generous in return.”

Long read: Nick Carroll on the “crazy fucking ultra-marathon” Molokai-to-Oahu paddle race!

Nick Carroll: I’d surfed there a thousand times, yet today it felt like nowhere I’d her been. It felt like a place you could die!” 

The reason for the disappearing of Carroll, along with his talented photography sidekick Hannah Anderson, were evident when Surfline started burying their work beneath layers of cams and weather reports.

Surfline, y’see, ain’t in the news biz, it’s in the cam and forecast biz so why not chip 150k or whatever off the wages bill?

After the cull, the pair pivoted to podcasting but it ain’t easy to cut through the noise.

And, now, and as announced by Sean Doherty, whom you all know and love, Nick and Hannah have become part owners of Surfing World magazine. 

Doherty made the announcement yesterday.

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Joining me as editors and owners at SW are Nick Carroll and Hannah Anderson. I’ve been working with both for years now on various projects – both are mad surf enthusiasts, both know their shit, both love Surfing World.

Nick Carroll first featured in Surfing World in the 1977 issue, ‘Magic School’ with his brother’s head on the cover, nose covered in white zinc. Nick is maybe the only person alive who’s edited more surf mags than me, and while Surfing World is just about the only mag in the world he hasn’t worked at, he refers to is as “the holy relic” of surf titles.

Hannah is a Bondi Anderson, surfing royalty, a photographer, filmmaker, writer and serial wave sharer (your’s, not her’s). She also becomes the first female editor and owner in Surfing World’s 63-year history (and I think its first Bondi editor/owner, god help us).

Surfing World will still be published independently from my Yamba backyard shed, will still focus on making the best surf mags there’s ever been, but also do all sorts of cool new shit as well. We’re off and running already. Onwards and sideways, as they say.

Just wanna say a huge thanks to Jonny Frank, who’s living over in Europe with his family and leaving the mag after 30-odd years. Frank’s been with Surfing World since the ‘90s and worked with me as Creative Director since we took it over in 2020.

Much noise below the line including from Shaun Tomson who wrote, “Holy yes, Relic no. This mag is alive.”

Very good news, I would suggest, although the departure of the great Jon Frank, among the best in the game, is cause, I think, for a little pause.

In his first public statement, Nick Carroll asked surfers to “keep an iconic brand alive and buy a sub! We promise never to run a cover shot of Tom Carroll again!!

Hannah Anderson pointed out she was now the “first female/owner editor of Australia’s oldest surf publication” and added, “A pinch me moment in my career.”