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| Once an independent news source, now owned by Outside |
Traditional print media started to die off in the 2000's and with cycling magazines folding up their tents and going away, or being hosted only online, this form of media consumption for cycling is rare these days. Certainly your weekly or monthly news and tech is not in the print media field anymore. So, what happened?
Even online sites that used to pretty much mirror what print did, only in a digital space, have dried up. What our media looks like is completely alien to what it once was. All I have to do is to look to my two twenty-something year olds that live with me to see how far removed from the 20th Century we are now in terms of how media is consumed.
I'll get to that in a minute, but it does bear looking at what there is out there now when it comes to "media" for cycling news and tech. One - The sites that dominate MTB and some other niche categories of cycling have been entrenched for a decade or more. Two - Outside Inc probably has had an overly important influence in cycling media, holding some major titles, websites, and even event registration under its umbrella. Their buyouts have caused a seismic shift in journalism, and who works where, more than anything I've noticed in the past 25 years. Three - Social media, and especially YouTube, have undermined credible cycling media to the point that it is hard to tell what is excellent, good, and trash. Now "anyone" can write about cycling and cycling tech, and there are a million places to find these expressions focused on cycling. That didn't used to be the case when your sources were limited and everyone got their news from a limited number of places.
Some media on the visual front gets so popular it becomes targeted by other companies and the fallout can make for frustrated cycling enthusiasts. Outdoor has already ticked off many readers, but the whole GCN+ debacle maybe has been the most offensive to cyclists and the most well known instance of what can happen when a company that was doing good things gets bought out by a bigger corporation that doesn't have cycling's best interests in mind.
GCN+ was famously acquired by Warner Bros. Discovery which promptly axed GCN+ and took the live cycling content to other WBD companies like Eurosport, Discovery+ and Max. Eventually GCN was bought back by a couple of its originators, one of which happens to be a principal in a big cycling brand marketing company, by the way. So, a very complex web of cycling influence exists there with many layers. It's a bit maddening.
Back to what my two kids watch these days. I note that most of what they watch for content is spread across smaller content creators on YouTube, gaming platforms, and Netflix with additional content from niche media like Crunchyroll, an anime' streaming platform. Also, neither one of my twenty-somethings use Twitter/X, Facebook, or Instagram at all. Like, never. So, where do you start if you are trying to reach a younger audience? Things are so "all-over the place" and fractured, that newer cyclists aren't consuming media in one place. They are all over on the internet, and this makes targeting, or even reaching those folks, a crap shoot at best for marketers and brands.
And meanwhile traditional cycling media writers are gathering behind paywalls and hoping to continue to eke out a living doing what they had done for years, which, much like print media, is a dying art form. Sure, there will be some vestiges of that sort of media for years to come, but things are changing - have changed, really, and unless a way is found to attract fans for cycling from underneath all the rocks where they are hiding now, things will look to be pretty bleak.
As the old saw goes, "The only constant is Change". Cycling hasn't kept up with the myriad changes in how young consumers consume information,and it has gotten a lot harder to catch their attention as a result. Time will tell if cycling can reverse course, but the way I see it now, cycling is way off the back.
Long time cycling tech writer Lennard Zinn (Velonews, until Outside bought it) has just rebooted on the Substack platform. There will be occasional free content, but a paid subscription is required to access the whole enchilada.
ReplyDeleteI hope he and James are successful.
GT, great observation, and it makes it tough for folks that don’t want to end up in a sheltered dead-end echo chamber to get honest fresh news. There may be great innovation and conversation happening on many separate media platforms that aren’t connected to each other, and that don’t cross-pollinate. It made me think of the early days of aviation or automobiles in the early 20th century where great innovations and colossal (and sometimes fatal) mistakes were made independently and concurrently across multiple continents, and it took decades for everyone to get on the same pages. Now, a hundred years later, we have safer cars and airplanes and a set of tested and reliable engineering standards. Similarly, by the mid/late 20th century you could pick your preferred newspaper, magazine, or TV or radio station, but the basic news they reported was usually the same. As you pointed out. Different delivery and packaging but the actual stories and content were generally consistent. I hope that this period of media transition settles soon, and people can freely go to their chosen platform and method of consumption and get what should be essentially consistent, honest, truthful, and reliable information.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!
Once cycling is mainstream transportation, there will be little media,
ReplyDeleteafter all have you ever seen "Vintage Shopping Cart Quarterly" ?
@scottg - I'd take that over having cycling become a subculture that barely survives because the message of cycling gets stunted by old methods of communication that are no longer effective.
DeleteI don't really think either your example or mine will ultimately be what happens, but I'd rather it be that cycling becomes more mainstream than not, and if the cost of that is some of what you say, then so be it.
Nice dig at Bicycle Quarterly, by the way.
My observation over the years is that a number of cycling sites have switched from doing actual reviews and journalism to doing nothing more than reposting press releases and sponsored content. I understand why that happened, but it's hard to get engagement when you're not doing anything to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
ReplyDeleteI'm also letting my BQ subscription expire as I feel, for me, the content has become too similar from issue to issue. I'll continue to subscribe to Bikepacking Journal as it's less focused on reviews and more focused on trips and experiences.