SEA Magazine and Boating World scuttled...

They may not be gone. https://www.ibinews.com/mergers-acq...NspFg1uy80mekjWskWqHAEjDXmI2Yo4bSzQHTu5x3d02k

There is a reason for shutting down sub companies. It's not making money.
It is always sad and again the timing may suck but the end of the year is when it happens for anybody. Old expenses are gone for the new years clean slate.

Personally, magazines are a good place for any smart media conglomerate to start cutting fat.

Duncan had a lot of coals in the fire, multiple magazines, boat shows, fishing shows, weekly periodicals. A lot to manage and look over. From the outside it looks quite exhausting for an industry vet, he has been at it a long time.

He was really good to the local boat manufacturers and helped them promote their product with magazine cover shots etc. Tireless worker and the setup, running and tear down of the local boat shows is a demanding task. I did a cover shot with him at early dawn off the Newport Coast, he was great at setting up the lighting / orientation of the shot, taking the pictures out of the helicopter, it was a bit unnerving as we were so close at one point I could have tossed him a drink!

SEA magazine is a west coast institution and will get new legs to navigate it down the path of the modern media world.

I'm old enough to recall when every issue of Yachting magazine was at least an inch thick, when Rudder was a fine magazine edited by Boris Lauer Leonardi, when Pete Smyth put out Motor Boating & Sailing. My first (and most fun) job was as an Associate Editor at a marine magazine.

I just read the latest issue of a national boating magazine today is about 25 minutes -- so skinny and few ads I'm sure it lost money for the publisher. And here we are discussing dying magazines in the media that is killing them -- the internet. I hope Sea survives, it was a fairly good magazine. And, I was a subscriber.

Hi all, good to be back.

Carl and I have had many discussions over the impending demise of print. Although we have seen pubs go under and some of those that are holding on have been reduced to a mere shadow of what they once were, I think some form of print will remain. Us old timers still like the paper-in-hand experience, they don't need batteries, and I can keep my bathroom magazine rack full. e-mags allow for faster searching and convenience to preview a pub from a device I have all the time.

As a freelance writer for SEA Magazine for I think 14 years (I went through five editors there, with a new one recently onboard) and a few articles for Boaters World, I really enjoyed the team that Duncan McIntosh had working on the pubs. Hard working, dedicated, just about the best in the industry to keep pumping out the issues monthly. I'm sure the decision to shutter the pubs was not easy, and the suddenness has me thinking it was a financial axe that came down. Otherwise, I would think they would try to market the titles to others before turning out the lights.

Needless to say, the email I received on Nov 27 was saddening and gut-wrenching for the sake of my friends at the office. I enjoyed the magazine with their west coast focus but industry-wide exposure. I do hope the titles comes back for those displaced by the sudden shutdown. And I would like to have that title in my stable again, it made me proud.
Long live print (well, some form of it anyway)!

I am definitely a boating magazine print guy, admittedly biased on having a magazine in my hand. I won’t even tell you how many I have collected over the years and still have plenty of the good old 1” think Yachting and Motor Boat & Sailing ones catalogued in boxes in my garage.

Just when I think that print is obsolete, I notice that the magazine racks in my local grocery stores are expanding, including boating, fishing and hunting themes, so there must be a market out there amongst 335 million US people plus international readers.

I think the hardest thing for the current magazine owners is the difficulty they face with changing it to a better product, it needs to evolve and the culture they live in with their editors and staff is not capturing the right product and evolution process.

Power Boat Reports was my favorite. Subscriber from the first to the last. My comments were of last page print in the last issue.
Boat test were always a joke. That's why I gave up on those other rags years ago.
Cover to cover sales gimmicks AND THEN the ads.
I get my ProBoatBuilder and send in a few bux every year to cover the hard copy. That's my only subscription.

My favorite marine publication is "Messing in Boats" -- black and white, rough paper stock, devoted to home boat builders and small boats. The articles are often funny, touching and intensely personal. I also like Motor Boating from England.

Being a boat junkie and having been in the publishing business, I subscribe to almost all of them -- Yachting, Power & Motoryacht, Passagemaker, Southern Boating, Boat International, Yachts International, Sea and the two mentioned above. Even if they are beholden to advertisers and uncritical about the boats they feature, I still enjoy reading about new boats and gear. Motor Boating from England is one of the few magazines that still features first-person cruising accounts which I enjoy.