the May Editorial of Transworld...how to suck and blow at the same time

[skategeezer]

Sorry,
on this one, I just can't let go.

It's the May editorial.

It's a convulted mish mash of railing against "the man upstairs" and somehow pointing fingers.Transworld, you are what you are. You are owned by a very large, multinational corporation that demands shareholder value. They will do whatever it takes to get that return on investment. This is capitalism.

Here's a snippet, guaranteed to make your just shake your head...hypocrisy meter set to 11...

"We don't care about competition. That's why we skate. We don't care about free market capitalism. That's why we skate. We don't care about demographics or focus groups. And we sure as hell don't give a f--k about newsstand sales to keep us from leaving work early for that sunset mini-ramp sesh. As "skateboard journalists" we remain skateboarders first and journalists second. I don't look at the numbers, I don't talk "market strategy."

Click here to find out what a one time page rate is in Transworld.

Transworld Online Media Kit

"we don't care about free market capitalism"



$21,145 dollars for a full page is a significant amount. Howvever, if you commit to 12 issues, you can get a deal - $15,680 - that's $188,160 per year.

Ok, so for the record,

Transworld is owned by the Bonnier Corp.

Last year, they paid over $300 million dollars to Time Warner for 18 magazines - including the Transworld titles.

Company Overview
Bonnier Corporation is one of the largest consumer-publishing groups in America, and with more than 40 special-interest magazines and related multimedia projects and events, it is the leading media company serving passionate, highly engaged audiences. With over 1,100 employees and more than $350 million in annual revenue, Bonnier Corp. ranks in the top 15 nationally among publishing companies.

Five years ago...Grant Brittain and Dave Swift left Transworld to start up their own magazine called The Skateboard Mag.

Here's a article about that development from 2003. Note the first paragraph.


September 20, 2003

NADIA BOROWSKI SCOTT / Union-Tribune

While photo editor and photographer J. Grant Brittain has been with Transworld Skateboarding for 20 years, the departure of many other staffers under the new ownership of Time Warner has many insiders wondering whether the Oceanside-base publishing company has become too corporate for its own good.
In the new edition of Transworld Skateboarding, one page before an advertisement that features a skateboarder named Trainwreck hurling himself down a large set of stairs, there is an ad for L'Oreal hair dye that features a pair of platinum blond models.
The pitch in the ad: "powered-up lightening. pumped-up conditioning. for her. for him. for you."
The verdict from skateboarders: Lame.
Insiders say the acceptance of ads like L'Oreal's, which seem so out of step with the interests of the skate mag's core readership, is an indicator of the new corporate attitude that has transformed Oceanside-based Transworld Media since Time Warner bought the company three years ago.
Now, several recent staff departures have insiders wondering if Transworld has finally become too corporate for its own good.
In its first two decades, the publisher of action sports magazines – including Transworld Skateboarding, Transworld Snowboarding and Transworld Surf – had survived a number of ownership changes and a brush with bankruptcy, each time with minimal turnover or unrest.
But that has not been the case since Time Warner came into the picture. Recently departed veterans say they could hardly make a decision without calling New York, and that they were being pressured to do things like produce more special issues and to take more non-core advertising, such as the recent L'Oreal ad. Special projects like skateboard videos, which Transworld has released sporadically for a decade or so, are being demanded at a more rapid and regular pace.
"People are starting to notice who owns Transworld now," said Mike Mihaly, the former general manager of Transworld Skateboarding, who left his post last week.
Mihaly, an 11-year veteran of the company, said the new management had been redefining a number of veterans' jobs, adding some responsibilities and taking away others. "And so a lot of the original guys left," he said.
Glenn Rogers, vice president and group publisher for Transworld Media, conceded that things have changed for the once-entrepreneurial company, but that many employees are happy with the benefits. "Naturally, when a business scales up there are going to be changes," he said. "Is there a little more red tape? I'm sure there is. On the other hand there is financial stability, so there are trade-offs to everything."
In terms of head count, the recent departure figures are far from staggering. Around a dozen key figures have left Transworld in the past two years, but only a handful of veterans remain out of a total of 120 or so employees. The company's executive committee has been replaced almost completely.
"Nobody was summarily fired, but what it came down to is they are a mainstream publisher who bought a group of niche magazines that don't operate the same way," said Fran Richards, a former vice president of sales who left Transworld last year.
Of course, the rising popularity of action sports has changed Transworld's readership. Action sports stars are in video games and television commercials, they're penning biographies and endorsing products like Tylenol – not exactly the hardest-core sponsor. "Younger readers are being exposed to so much advertising, and I don't think it's as jarring to them as it may have been to the previous generation," Rogers said.
At the same time, Transworld's overall business has continued to perform well, taking into consideration the general malaise in magazine publishing. Rogers said Transworld's revenue was just under $40 million in 2002, and that the company expects about the same this year.
Transworld was founded in 1983 by Larry Balma, a one-time commercial fisherman who owned Tracker Trucks, a manufacturer of skateboard components. Balma started Transworld Skateboarding as an alternative to Thrasher, a San Francisco-based magazine that caters to older skateboarders and tends on the side of punk rock.
"They were pretty harsh, sex and drugs and using four-letter words and all that," Balma said. "And in the early '80s, the sport started growing and (Thrasher) wasn't the best magazine for young kids."
Transworld, which is named for Balma's commercial fishing company, grew quickly and in 1986 added a second title, Transworld Snowboarding.
Throughout its history, Transworld has strived to add national advertisers as a means of supporting advertisements from core companies. National advertisers were generally charged more and are encouraged to design custom ads for the action sports market.
"The kids view advertising much like they view editorial, so we were constantly advising general advertisers to craft their message," said Brian Sellstrom, who served as president of Transworld Publications from 1989 until 2000.
Sellstrom said this often meant refusing ads from certain national advertisers that could be deemed uncool, even at times when the magazine was suffering financially. "It's a unique audience and we were always sensitive to that," he said.
In 1994, after a year of negotiations, Transworld Snowboarding was purchased by Times Mirror. Three years later, Times Mirror added Transworld Skateboarding. Transworld Media was briefly owned by Tribune after it acquired Times Mirror in 2000, then became a unit of AOL Time Warner.
Almost immediately, the newly merged AOL Time Warner made its mark. In late 2001, an issue of Transworld Skateboarding contained an America Online software disc, prompting a managing editor to pen a note apologizing to readers.
"Sorry for the poly-bagged edition with the 1,000 hours of free Internet access from AOL," Eric Sentianin wrote in an editor's note in the November 2001 issue. "We here at the magazine didn't even find out about the atrocity until (the magazines) made it into the office. We feel just as violated as you."
The move rattled Time Warner executives in New York, insiders say, although Sentianin was never disciplined for the move.
Despite the internal strife, the Transworld stable of magazines has remained more or less unchanged from an editorial perspective. From the vantage point of a 14-year-old reader, Transworld is still just Transworld. But inside the office, things are not as happy as they used to be.
"There is some unrest, and it's hard for me because it's my child and I see it faltering," Balma said. "But you have to let kids grow up, and that's what's going on."

[Rusty13]

My hypocrisy meter blew the #### up,hah.

This is why Phelps and Thrasher kick so much ass. While i'm sure you could dig up trash on 'em they are what they are,and are what they always have been.

[Raoul Duke]

I'm pretty sure Concrete Wave kicks the MOST ass...

thanks for the Buyer's Guide Michael

[skategeezer]

I am just glad it arrived...damn mail!

April issue at the press

[samhell]

Transworld doesn't even make for good toilet paper, not soft at all...
It does work well for twisting up and using to get a good campfire
started though, burns very fast...