Alpinist Goes Down

And only the clueless are shocked…

It’s the talk of the climbing world right now. Everyone’s favorite super glossy mag Alpinist is calling it quits. A quick perusal of the announcement over on the site shows many people upset (and maybe surprised?) about this. And it is unfortunate, as I think the mag was excellent, and only recently I finally threw down for a sub. Without a sound business model, however, it was only a matter of time. Dougald Macdonald has an excellent take on it, which may be especially enlightening for folks who haven’t spent any time in the magazine business. For those of us who have, however, it was more of a surprise that they lasted this long, with only the deep pockets of their sugar daddy, er, I mean founder, to keep them in it. It’ll be interesting to see if someone buys it and tries to turn it into a profitable mag. If so, you can certainly expect to see more ads, as that’s how you make the money in that there magazine business.