There’s been a lot of talk about how the editorial market is near death. Here’s a whole website dedicated to it. The latest news about National Geographic Adventure is just another nail in the coffin and I couldn’t agree more with those realists. The modern day magazine, the one charging thousands a page for advertising, while paying out hundreds a page for photography, in a book that is 50% advertising is on its last legs… especially in the outdoor world.

I’ve worked for several years with some of the best magazines in the outdoor business and I have grown increasingly frustrated with how the higher ups ‘can’ idea after idea because they are ‘too far outside the box’ or ‘are going to upset our advertisers’. It seems that recently finding advertisers is so difficult that they control content to a degree and I suppose the ‘ballpark frank’ controversy from a few months ago supports that claim. But on my flight back to SLC recently I started actually thinking about why editorial content was seemingly in decline. Was it my perceptions? My bias?

I started out researching by talking with some of the best photographers and illustrators as well as athletes in the business. I wanted to know what publications they loved and which ones sucked. I wanted to know who was great to work with and who swept their invoices under the rug. But as I started talking with people it quickly became obvious that I was opening up a very big can of worms (to the point where I were Facebook chat crashed yet again). I couldn’t believe how emotional and upset some people became when it came to talking about the decline of the editorial content in their favorite magazines. Everyone agreed, but nobody could specifically say what is was.  That got me thinking more… We all agreed that editorial is in a cycle of mediocrity… great, so what does that mean for the future?

Traditionally if you wanted to ‘make it big’ as a photographer this is the path you would follow:

1) Shoot Personal Work
2) Shoot Editorial
3) Advertisers See Editorial; Hire you For Small Projects
4) Come up with new creative ideas: Shoot More Editorial
5) Advertisers See Editorial; Hire you For Big Projects
6) Go to 4 and Repeat
7) Get Rich and Retire

So what happens if the trend we are in continues and you cut out the biggest developer and most creative aspect of the process, the magazines?

As a beginning photographer the best way to get started is to submit images to a magazine. Usually you speak directly with the Photo Editor and they often give honest feedback about what they like and what they don’t. Magazines are a source of inspiration for the advertising world too, editorial is always a season ahead. I used to spend hours on the phone talking with my PE’s Tyler Stableford, Zach Reynolds, and Daivd Clifford when I was just getting started. The feedback they gave (none of that sugar coated Flickr style BS) helped shape the images I was shooting, forced me to think creatively, AND made me feel like I was part of a bigger team that was excited to produce the best magazine possible.

More recently however, in an effort to save $$ a lot of the niche magazines started getting rid of their photo editors orothers double time as PEs (NONE of the 5 national climbing publications have a photo editor). Also as a means to save money, magazines have been hiring ’staff’ or ‘contributing’ photographers and writers who often work below established freelance space rates or are paying up to a year late (yup even the big ones).

The images getting pulled these days aren’t the best ones that have been refined through months of experimentation; they are the ones that are cheap or they are run small to avoid paying higher page rates.  I know this is a broad generalization, but it is entirely true in most of the outdoor publications AND ITS MAKING MOST THE MAGAZINES SUCK.  The magazine that goes to print today isn’t the best magazine its the cheapest one that won’t piss off any advertisers.  I know this first hand, when I was working as a contributing photographer for a publication last year I often had images that filled a request but I thought they stunk, so I would never submit them… that really pissed the publisher off.

And more troubling to me than the crappy images and illustrations being run, is that there is very little nurturing of the next generation of photographers… the people that should be shooting the covers two years down the road. If the PE’s aren’t there I don’t see how those ideas (or photographers) will ever see there true potential… and that’s some scary shit.

Do I think magazines are dead, no, but I think the gravy train that big publishers were on is years in the past. I think magazines that want to nurture photographers, illustrators, and writers will begin to prosper again.

What I hope we will see is an increase of artist and content based magazines that speak to their respective communities. Maybe they won’t be monthly publications anymore because editorially teams need to be smaller; but who wouldn’t much rather pick up a several hundred page magazine printed quarterly with awesome content?

Which finally gets me to my point. If you are a publisher or an editor and have had to make compromises so that you aren’t producing ‘the best magazine’ but rather ‘the most profitable magazine’ — take a step back and look at the mediocrity you are putting out there and bringing up. There is just no possible way that a mediocre magazine is going to survive… if for no other (let’s forget about the $$ for a second) reason than there will be no one talented enough to produce your mediocre content a few years down the road.

AND! If you are a photographer, why submit mediocre images to a mediocre publication… do you really want your name associated with less than best?

Lastly, to the few magazines out there that do take pride in photography, art and content (my glossy paper, and two page spread loving mags know who you are!) thanks for bringing up the next generation of creative talent.

tk

(PS if there are any out of work editors that want to proof this post I’ll happily make the edits [joking])

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