R.I.P. NGA

I wept inside a little when NGA announced it was no more. But I also must admit I hadn’t read it in years. It suffered the same fate as Men’s Journal. I remember the premier issue of both. They were sensational, and then they start the slow decline. For me the first sign of doom is switching from the over-sized format to a standard format, as both mags did. We are in a void of written word at the moment. The internet is over crowded by bloggers who can’t write, and the magazines are doomed by finances and appealing to the lowest common denominator. I think this will take years to shake out.

I did a lot of service writing for NGA. I don’t believe any of it was mindless. Service was the mag’s bread and butter, and a lot of us took pride in doing it well. It was what allowed breathing room for Roberts, Junger, etc., to entertain and inspire us. It was a successful balance for more than a decade. Why? Because service SERVES readers. Can’t forget that part of the equation. And believe me, readers avidly embraced NGA. Adventure’s emphasis on service and avoidance of the cynicism and hipper-than-thou tone of many other magazines helped it stand apart. I really don’t think quality service writing killed the magazine. I wish I knew the exact formula that guarantees success in the print world. But I’m quite sure that neglecting service journalism is not a component.

Does anyone know what will happen to people with paid subsriptions? I’ve received several years worth of subscriptions as gifts. Last week I used the NGA webiste to ask them this question and am yet to receive a response.

I enjoyed the magazine, but then I didn’t use it as my sole info for adventures. I’d use it to spark ideas and activites in places that I’d not thought of before. I’d take that spark and combine it with some of my own research to turn it into an amazing trip, sometimes completely diverging from the original activity.

RIP NGA While I did enjoy the magazine, some of the articles did seem “skimpy”.
Perhaps a future mag will take the lessons learned and hopefully present a more mature set of articles and great photography that we all expect. thanks,AC

Anyone remember Geo? Anyone remember when Sports Illustrated used to feature quality writing — and had outdoor recreation ON ITS COVER? Even the cited Alpinist has already died once; will it survive this incarnation? Probably not. Because like all the others that came before, it will descend into providing so-called “service journalism,” which is simply the outdoor mags falling back on a hollow image of being able to help people achieve their dreams — instead of delivering the dream itself. Good writing can convey that dream and inspire; the service writing that outdoor mags eventually default to only dumbs the dream down and accelerates the decline. GPS coordinates for ruins in Dark Canyon? For surf breaks on the coast north of SFO? Really?! No magic there; just plug in the numbers and go. Even to folks in NYC and LA, on whom the rags depend since it’s only by the grace of the non-endemic ad dollar that they even exist nowadays, there’s no aura in that. If the rags would stick to the dream on which they were founded, there might be hope.

As sad as I am to see this, I will admit that my subscription to NGA has not been read cover to cover in a few years. I guess when it went to the “top 10” this or that articles and catalog like layouts of gear+ clothing, I kind of turned sour on it. I miss the great articles where I discovered great adventure from great authors.

I think you are exactly right, Steven. I am so frustrated, both as a writer and as a consumer (or, should I say, ex-consumer) of magazines.

So many editors, especially those of outdoors- or sports-related mags, seem to think that the public no longer has any attention span, that they want the page-equivalent of sound-bytes. So “articles” have been reduced to top-ten lists, or a few paragraphs of Q&A that constitutes a “profile”, or a few phrases that are little more than an extended figure caption. As you say, we can get that for free on the web – why we would pay $5 (or more!) for that? I can flip through most mags in an hour or so – and mostly I just find myself skimming over the SOS (light stuff as listed above, recipe sections, and gear lists that are barely distringushable from ads) and getting little of value out of it. So no, I’m not paying money for that!

And then magazines wonder why their circulation is dropping. Yes, the web has created some real competition to print media. But the print media’s response – to try to replicate the free web content – is guaranteed to fail! If magazines got back to doing what they can do well and the web cannot – that is: well researched, well written, in-depth articles – maybe they’d find that they have a market again. (And maybe some advertisers, too…)

I had a subscription for a long time but completely stopped reading NGA several years ago.

At the time nearly every article — regardless of the topic — seemed obligated to include gratuitous Bush-bashing, global warming preaching, or both. Almost like it was a requirement for an article to be published.

That is the kind of nonsense that in the end only costs subscribers, it never gains them. No one ever says, “Hey I heard that one magazine always mentions global warming in every article whether it is relevant or not. I’m definitely going to subscribe to that.”

As a small time author, I feel I’ve been embattled with all the free content on the internet. I feel the continent wide and inch deep equation has got to change. There’s gotta be a solution to all of us forming symbiotic relationships to be rewarded to do what we love to do.

Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.