Surf Mags

[moreorless]

I so agree. Tracks has become a piece of sexist fluff with a pronounced Brit Lager Lout sensibility, with a target demographics of IQs under 70.

Yep, it's been like for, say, the past 15-20 years. A total waste of time.

[Beanpole]

What they should do is just fill the mag bit with all the ads then you could just chuck that in the bin and watch the dvd
Whoops, thats what they do allready :?

[mudguts]

i know its a pommie mag but i find the surfers path is a good read. doesnt really go for the im so cool title. they do some reaaly in depth articles, the one they dod on the tsunami last year was an informative read.

[ether]

My surf magazine purchasing has taken the following evolutionary steps:

Occassional buyer when i had the money (teens & prior)
Subscriber (early-mid 20's)
Occasional buyer when i found the urge (late 20's)
Opportunistic buyer e.g. free DVD (early 30's)
Almost never (mid 30's)

Yep, lost my taste for both ASL & Tracks, and much as I could whinge about the quality I suspect it's more a function of age: those mags are aimed at people younger than me.

[Lairdy]

FHM and Tracks

I think with Emap publishing at the helm Tracks is managed in the same way any of their consumer magazines is operated.

Profit first - quality second.

A sales team works hard to fill the mag with Ad's, and the publisher is happy and thus neglects what is actually being published - other than ad's - which is a generally p1ss poor editorials!

Yes there are great articles, if you can find them in the swamps of full page ad's. There are also lots of excerts from FHM etc, which are out of place in a surf magazine! If I want stories on the latest gizmo to make the ladies excited - I will buy FHM!!!!!

Plus the editorial guys seem a bit up themselves always bigging up surf rage and bad attitudes. If you are truly street smart you don't give a hoot about what is written in a magazine.

In Tracks I want quality editorial, surf talk, surf stories and surf pics.

The best place to get this info and keep up to date with what is happening in the surf world seems to be online these days!

Perhaps Real Surf could release a monthly magazine with extracts from the forums, including pictures us users have sent in, round up of news etc?

I am sure readers would not mind a sprinkling of ad's if the magazine was free - with real surf making money from the advertising.

The real surf monthly round up? Perhaps they could do it on a monthly printable email newsletter?

Food for thought: perhaps someone should save Tracks and buy it from Emap and get it back to a raw decent honest surf magazine?

[me]

Waves is also published by Emap and co incidently share the same office space as Tracks! NOt meaning to have anything personal against the ed of tracks (Sean Doherty, if its still him) but am i right in saying he was the guy who used to comeantate the CT events? You would think that someone writing a SURFING mag and commentating on "seeiick hacks" and "maaaasive gouges" (insert: put on thick slow aussie accent) would be able to link a couple of turns together, deadset poo man stance / arms everywhere made everyone laugh...then be pissed off how a kook got a cushy job in the industry. (waiting for NC's remarks about the tough life surf journos have!! jjks!).
Peace out

[Lucky Al]

Tracks meant too much to me when I was a kid for me to give up on it now. I'll keep looking forward to the day when it becomes a great surfing magazine again.

[Nick Carroll]

(waiting for NC's remarks about the tough life surf journos have!! jjks!).

Yeah, it makes me want to tear me fingernails out

All witticisms aside, this is an interesting thread for anyone actively running a surf mag at the moment, which I'm not thank god, other than advising the crew at ASL and at Surfing mag in the US ... to hold a semblance of quality in a bigger selling surf mag is much more difficult than it appears. It's very hard to find the kind of intelligent and naturally skilled staff as was once propagated in Tracks in the 70s (Witzig, Jarratt etc), because anyone that good these days is sucked directly into the filthy rich world of advertising or some such. The commercial pressures are almost unbearable: there's always someone who knows how to sell more mags by dumbing 'em down, the great time-honoured Australian media recipe might I add. This would be especially true in a larger organisation, especially one with a record of making billions out of selling stupidity as amusement.

As a previous ed of Tracks in a much more fun era, I was bitter for a while about Emap's purchase and FHMing of the title, it seemed to me to be a classic case of reverse colonialism -- Tracks was an authentic, even bizarre Australian publication about an authentic Austro-Pacific way of living, and all of a sudden it was straitjacketed and lobotomised by a corporate board based in Yorkshire, England (ironically the birthplace of Captain James Cook!). But I'm long over that and wish the crew well with the mag, and read it hopefully from time to time to see if Jonesy has taken a good photo, or if Sean has slipped in one of his stray flickers of gold.

[fong]

all the mags sux big time there not interested in art/surfin or anything else.....there to make money 4 shareholders....b all end all

and it is kinda sad......because theres so much more too us as a bunch than simply floggin stuff

no matter wat u ride ( thu if u good u'll b on 6' fish like me ) even if u paddle out and catch no waves.....4 those few minutes...hour wat ever.....u have left the real world and all it's b/s b'hind

p.s and sean as ed of tracks i hold him personally responsiable 4 me now having buy toilet paper.....talk about gold....try a gold nugget....his past his best...quick get rid of him

p.p.s and admin if u readin this....SUX IN..... 4' cresent ( soft ) heads...pffft don't bother with packing the short boards next time....just admit where u at and retire

fong...may/maybe not surfed a 6'10'' in way over head waves on point directly nth u admin.....softcock

[Lucky Al]

Get those bastards in here so we can talk to 'em and get 'em to explain what's up!!!

[FishStick]

A mate gave me a copy of "surfers path" and I thought it was quite good, although it's like $13 and English. They actually talk about breaks in distant lands and not how they got drunk with the Billabong crew on some surf trip like what Track's only seems to write about now.

[g_u_m_b_y]

all the mags sux big time there not interested in art/surfin or anything else.....there to make money 4 shareholders....b all end all

and it is kinda sad......because theres so much more too us as a bunch than simply floggin stuff

no matter wat u ride ( thu if u good u'll b on 6' fish like me ) even if u paddle out and catch no waves.....4 those few minutes...hour wat ever.....u have left the real world and all it's b/s b'hind

p.s and sean as ed of tracks i hold him personally responsiable 4 me now having buy toilet paper.....talk about gold....try a gold nugget....his past his best...quick get rid of him

p.p.s and admin if u readin this....SUX IN..... 4' cresent ( soft ) heads...pffft don't bother with packing the short boards next time....just admit where u at and retire

fong...may/maybe not surfed a 6'10'' in way over head waves on point directly nth u admin.....softcock

Where is you're avatar fong?

[Sheepeck]

Yea, TSP (The Surfer's Path) is nice. Good stories, perfect paper, nature friendly, 6times a year - which is just OK.
I have it subscribed for two years and thinking about having more.

[creeper]

surf mags are just another business out to make money and the more they make the better, same with all of us. if you knew how much the bigger mags get each issue from advertising you'd fall over. i make my money as a fashion photographer shooting for 3 mags and one thing i have always wondered: do they have model release forms? that is your permission to use your image. that pic of someone cutting back is making both the photographer and magazine money, did you get your share? if you aren't you should be. recently i think it was corbis had some tribesman in deepest africa sign release forms, even though they'd never held a pen for fear of being sued somewhere down the line for using their image without written permission. makes you wonder.

[fong]

do they have model release forms? that is your permission to use your image. that pic of someone cutting back is making both the photographer and magazine money, did you get your share? .

now theres a

i can somehow remember someone insisting on a share...mayb a hawaiian :? can't remember his name.........didn't see his photo much after that

but it's valid point

it's just the whole......u spend ten grand on a ad spread and we'll feature all u best riders on a surf trip.....BORING
p.s u gonna post something in maccas202stupid artist photo thread creeper

[g_u_m_b_y]

were is the avatar?

Telstra 1 cent text...there will be side effects

:?

[g_u_m_b_y]

that took me ages

[fong]

lol.....avatars are so like last year

get with the fashion.....less is best