This is a great read and interesting to look at the trend across the industry as a whole. It feels like the shift in the outdoor lifestyle world is mirrored in other places as well at the moment. It's hard to tell if some of the changes are simply to stay relevant or whether individual companies and organiations are seeing different opportunities and want more. I agree with the comment below that there is a dispersion of information - for better or worse - but I hold out hope that genuine storytelling will win out in the end.
Great article. A lot of information here, I don’t know where to begin.
I think I can speak (write) on two points.
The first is about content creation and what I think is happening. There is good and bad to this. I’ve been a content creator in the Outdoors Lifestyle world for 18 years. There have been a lot of changes in that time and certainly before then. One definite change more recently is the influx of creators and the platforms being used, spreading the audience thinner and increasing competition for readers/viewers/listeners. Now, we also have AI which is allowing less experienced creators to dip into second hand knowledge and add it to their message.
With this, I believe,that in time the audience will find greater value in more legitimate storytelling.
The second point is that I think that the landscape of conservation is changing. We rely heavily on government to fund parks and wild spaces and where I think that this will continue, I also think that we are going to need to look to community involvement and management of these spaces in the future (more than we do now). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that local communities can have greater control of their lands. There are many places around the world where land stewardship is overseen by the local community. Time will tell how it plays out.
Hey thank you for this post! i was a little worried when i saw it that it would be the same doomscroll information i’ve been trapped in the last week but it had a lot of information i hadn’t seen before! thank you!
Thank you, Maddy. For five years I subscribed to Outside and for twenty to Backpacker. Both publications devolved over time from knowledge dissemination to lists and extreme tales wrapped in glossy ads. The outdoor “industry” seems to have abandoned naturalism and science. Like agriculture or mining, it treats untrammeled nature as a resource to be exploited. Today, I only subscribe to Appalachia. Their quarterly Accidents section is the pinnacle of outdoor journalism. It teaches preparedness and humility when heading outdoors. Rather than create content, perhaps the outdoor media industry should impart wisdom and knowledge. As well as admiration and respect for nature.
I'm a backpacker and loved Backpacker Magazine for years. One of my favorite features was the gear reviews. Why? The suites actually used the stuff, were verified hiking dirtbags, and I don't know, it just seemed legit. When Outside bought Backpacker, and moved it to Digital only, I really feel the magic was gone. I spend a lot of time online, so retreating to a magazine to read about the best weekend trails near me was always great inspiration for my next trip. Having that experience online is not the same. Note: there is a magazine, Trails, which has a higher subscription price, but has a lot of that content Backpacker used to have.
Outside has been a dumpster fire for years. I hope they collapse completely and the good writers move onto making something that isn't about selling gear.
In a few days I can find and subscribe to more outdoors content than I have time to consume. Would I pay each of them $5/month? Nope, I can't afford that. But I would be the one curating it, not some publication team that has advertisers and revenue in their decision-making tree. And this content would be in many more forms that what a magazine could offer.
For the price of nothing but time I can watch a thorough 2 hour review and comparison of spotting scopes on Youtube. I recently watched two guys spend 45 minutes explaining the ballistics of two calibers of ammunition that are nearly indistinguishable. They weren't even trying to sell me anything, they just wanted to know if one truly was better than the other for a given use case.
In terms of getting outdoors, with just a few taps of my thumb I can download an app that shows me every trail within 100 miles. Not only that, it has up to date reviews, pictures, weather conditions, and warnings.
Information has become like a living thing. I don't know how an Outdoor Magazine could survive today, even online. What does it offer? Perhaps it would be valuable if it offered infrastructure for producing and hosting content. There are plenty of people who would love to have their adventures filmed, edited, and hosted somewhere without making the monetary investment in the recording equipment and the time investment in learning all the software and skills required for that.
I'm not sure why I typed all that when I could just say the tendency of the internet is to make everything as efficient as possible regardless of how many humans it eliminates from the process. It has been done to many things and it will be done to many more.
This part of your post is so spot on: “I think it’s a really good time to invest in additional job security— never in my life did I think my freelancing and my blog, which started as a fun project, would offer me more security than my friend’s government jobs.”
Thanks for writing this, and as someone who has been feeling the anxiety on all this for a while I'm 100% on board with your takeaways. Your 'what it means' analysis is nail on head territory IMHO.
I started noticing trends that bothered me some time back when it came to associated outdoor and environmental organizations. These days I vet who I support with my money and my time very carefully.
The debate over content creators has been very interesting. It can be done tastefully and not so tastefully. I like to think of the Japanese concept of Ikigai. There is a way to share what you love to people who find value in it and make a living from it. The problem for a lot of creators comes when they aren’t actually creating what they love, but a perverted version of it that makes the most money. It’s a delicate balance that’s hard to pull off.
This is a great read and interesting to look at the trend across the industry as a whole. It feels like the shift in the outdoor lifestyle world is mirrored in other places as well at the moment. It's hard to tell if some of the changes are simply to stay relevant or whether individual companies and organiations are seeing different opportunities and want more. I agree with the comment below that there is a dispersion of information - for better or worse - but I hold out hope that genuine storytelling will win out in the end.
Strong agree!
Great article. A lot of information here, I don’t know where to begin.
I think I can speak (write) on two points.
The first is about content creation and what I think is happening. There is good and bad to this. I’ve been a content creator in the Outdoors Lifestyle world for 18 years. There have been a lot of changes in that time and certainly before then. One definite change more recently is the influx of creators and the platforms being used, spreading the audience thinner and increasing competition for readers/viewers/listeners. Now, we also have AI which is allowing less experienced creators to dip into second hand knowledge and add it to their message.
With this, I believe,that in time the audience will find greater value in more legitimate storytelling.
The second point is that I think that the landscape of conservation is changing. We rely heavily on government to fund parks and wild spaces and where I think that this will continue, I also think that we are going to need to look to community involvement and management of these spaces in the future (more than we do now). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that local communities can have greater control of their lands. There are many places around the world where land stewardship is overseen by the local community. Time will tell how it plays out.
Thanks for your article
Hey thank you for this post! i was a little worried when i saw it that it would be the same doomscroll information i’ve been trapped in the last week but it had a lot of information i hadn’t seen before! thank you!
Thank you, Maddy. For five years I subscribed to Outside and for twenty to Backpacker. Both publications devolved over time from knowledge dissemination to lists and extreme tales wrapped in glossy ads. The outdoor “industry” seems to have abandoned naturalism and science. Like agriculture or mining, it treats untrammeled nature as a resource to be exploited. Today, I only subscribe to Appalachia. Their quarterly Accidents section is the pinnacle of outdoor journalism. It teaches preparedness and humility when heading outdoors. Rather than create content, perhaps the outdoor media industry should impart wisdom and knowledge. As well as admiration and respect for nature.
I'm a backpacker and loved Backpacker Magazine for years. One of my favorite features was the gear reviews. Why? The suites actually used the stuff, were verified hiking dirtbags, and I don't know, it just seemed legit. When Outside bought Backpacker, and moved it to Digital only, I really feel the magic was gone. I spend a lot of time online, so retreating to a magazine to read about the best weekend trails near me was always great inspiration for my next trip. Having that experience online is not the same. Note: there is a magazine, Trails, which has a higher subscription price, but has a lot of that content Backpacker used to have.
Excellent piece. The only quibble I have is that the Forest Service didn't fire people- this administration did.
I just listened to a fantastic podcast about the future of outdoor writing:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mountain-prairie-with-ed-roberson/id1106762925?i=1000685233567
Hey! I’d love to connect as a fellow outdoor writer! This is a great post
Ah interesting read, I’m about to pitch my first story to Outside - much less optimistic now
Outside has been a dumpster fire for years. I hope they collapse completely and the good writers move onto making something that isn't about selling gear.
In a few days I can find and subscribe to more outdoors content than I have time to consume. Would I pay each of them $5/month? Nope, I can't afford that. But I would be the one curating it, not some publication team that has advertisers and revenue in their decision-making tree. And this content would be in many more forms that what a magazine could offer.
For the price of nothing but time I can watch a thorough 2 hour review and comparison of spotting scopes on Youtube. I recently watched two guys spend 45 minutes explaining the ballistics of two calibers of ammunition that are nearly indistinguishable. They weren't even trying to sell me anything, they just wanted to know if one truly was better than the other for a given use case.
In terms of getting outdoors, with just a few taps of my thumb I can download an app that shows me every trail within 100 miles. Not only that, it has up to date reviews, pictures, weather conditions, and warnings.
Information has become like a living thing. I don't know how an Outdoor Magazine could survive today, even online. What does it offer? Perhaps it would be valuable if it offered infrastructure for producing and hosting content. There are plenty of people who would love to have their adventures filmed, edited, and hosted somewhere without making the monetary investment in the recording equipment and the time investment in learning all the software and skills required for that.
I'm not sure why I typed all that when I could just say the tendency of the internet is to make everything as efficient as possible regardless of how many humans it eliminates from the process. It has been done to many things and it will be done to many more.
This part of your post is so spot on: “I think it’s a really good time to invest in additional job security— never in my life did I think my freelancing and my blog, which started as a fun project, would offer me more security than my friend’s government jobs.”
Thanks for writing this, and as someone who has been feeling the anxiety on all this for a while I'm 100% on board with your takeaways. Your 'what it means' analysis is nail on head territory IMHO.
Such a helpful break down. But really… what is happening in the outdoor industry right now?!?
I started noticing trends that bothered me some time back when it came to associated outdoor and environmental organizations. These days I vet who I support with my money and my time very carefully.
The debate over content creators has been very interesting. It can be done tastefully and not so tastefully. I like to think of the Japanese concept of Ikigai. There is a way to share what you love to people who find value in it and make a living from it. The problem for a lot of creators comes when they aren’t actually creating what they love, but a perverted version of it that makes the most money. It’s a delicate balance that’s hard to pull off.