Longboard Magazine is no longer - it has gone the way of the dodo, perhaps to reappear in some other form. The phones are disconnected - phones for subscriptions and phones for selling ads, as well. This is not good news.
I’ve always partial to Logger Mag, and in particular the fact that they’ve been part of a longboarding revival ushered in by Joel Tudor. No matter your take on log rolling, it’s a shame to see a mag like Longboard Magazine stop the presses.
Longboard Magazine recognized early-ish the eventualy decline of print media, and attempted to create a downloadable PDF version of the glossy magazine. Unfortunately, that model didn’t work out. Furthermore, it’s definitely not a friendly economic climate for advertising sales for something niche-y like longboarding, itself inside a pretty niche-y industry that is surfing. That’s why the plug was pulled on Water Magazine a few months back, another glossy that was well received in the surfing community.
Guy Motil, the former editor and publisher was not available for comment at the time of writing. December 2008 was the last issue.
Update: Here’s the official release from publisher Guy Motil:
The recent economic and banking crisis here in the United States has had a dramatic impact on the domestic longboard community. Within days of Lehman’s banking collapse and the accompanying Wall Street plunge our offices were inundated with cancellations of advertising contracts and surf shop orders. In addition to these cancellations, many of our clients informed us that they would be unable to pay existing invoices any time in the near future (many of these businesses were already in the 180-day-plus category). In addition, the local banks in our area cancelled upcoming small business loans and froze existing lines of credit, this having a direct affect on Longboard Magazine and many of our local clients. Ultimately it appears that this situation affected the surf industry nation-wide. These are friends of ours with whom we have done business for many years, and include some of the most well-known brands in surfing. We feel that asking these companies to commit to further advertising and financial obligations at this point would not only be unfair but irresponsible.As a result, Longboard Magazine will be suspending our print publishing until after the January 2009 trade shows. It should be noted that we are not shutting down Longboard Magazine, only holding off printing our next issue until the longboard community can recover from the current financial crisis it is now experiencing.As a result of this decision, we have been forced to lay off most of our staff including advertising director Mike Aguirre and managing editor Chasen Marshall. We will continue working with freelance staff and independent contractors for the foreseeable future.On a positive note, we will continue to expand our website http://www.longboardmagazine.com and we would like to exchange links and information with anyone in the longboard community. In addition to our website, we are also completing several hard-cover book projects. Our recent book, Surfboards, was a critical and commercial success. We believe that book publishing is an important component in preserving surfing’s history and addressing concerns for the coastal environment.
By Surfing HQ · January 29, 2009
http://www.dailystoke.com/surfing/did-longboard-magazine-go-under/
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