The New Yorker Covers Outside, Or What’s Left of It

In her article provokingly titled ‘The Decline of Outside Magazine Is Also the End of a Vision of the Mountain West‘ Rachel Monroe summarizes for The New Yorker what is going on, and going wrong with Outside Magazine and Robin Thurston. The whole thing is a fascinating piece and well worth your time. I’m highlighting the juiciest bits:

I think there was a fundamental lack of direction or understanding from the C-suite as to what any of these magazines were, why the audiences cared about them or subscribed, and what it takes to tell a good story,” a former employee told me.

Clearly.

When Pocket Outdoor Media began scooping up titles, many of them were still profitable or breaking even, with committed but declining audiences, according to sources familiar with the acquisitions.

Incredible pointless distraction by people who think too highly of themselves. Makes me think of several other high profile figures currently hellbent on “fixing things” in this country.

If the company could convert ten per cent of the brand’s existing audiences into subscribers, he theorized, that would amount to twenty million members. (By comparison, the Times has nearly eleven million digital subscribers.) That goal was ambitious, Thurston conceded during his initial meeting with Outside staffers, but he did expect that, within four or five years, Outside, Inc., would be making three hundred and eighty million dollars in revenue from digital subscriptions alone. (That’s more than the Washington Post and The Atlantic made, combined, in 2024.)

Bahahahahahahaha… breathes… bahahahahahaha. I am sorry. What hubris, incredible, just incredible.

“Once you’ve got Sequoia [Heritage] on board, the incentive is for just an insane level of scale, and the media entities were immediately superfluous.

Clearly.

“I think the crux of the problem is he’s running a media business and he fundamentally doesn’t love media,” Felix Magowan, the founder of Pocket Outdoor Media, said.

Yepp, that is abundantly clear. Media, storytelling, writing, the love for sharing adventures and experiences have always been intrinsically linked to the outdoor space. So, I would go as far as to say that Thurston probably doesn’t even love the outdoors.

But sources familiar with the company’s operations, including former executives, say that the problems at Outside, Inc., can’t just be chalked up to a changing media landscape. Former employees described Thurston as quick to both embrace and abandon ideas, strong on vision but weak on execution.

Throwing out random things that others have really done: “social feed”, “NFTs”, “SXSW-style festivals” isn’t even strong on vision, it’s just chasing what has been done and yelling “I can do that too”.

Via John Krakauer on Instagram.