 Sound
RIDER! @ 10
PART 6: Us and Them
By Tom Mehren
You might agree with me, or you might find it annoying when I say
this, but I truly believe Sound RIDER! is probably the best source
of information about riding motorcycles in the Northwest today.
Ten years ago the local publishing world was a bit different.
While the idea of an online magazine was simply a dream just
beginning to take shape for companies like Microsoft’s Slate, the
print world dominated. For us, it’s where we wanted to be and the
idea of having a print magazine for Sound RIDER! wasn’t too
appealing.
The local landscape included players like Northwest Motorsports
News, a large format monthly rag that focused more on dirt bike
events and happenings than any other genre of the sport. The
magazine sustained itself on a co-op advertising model until they
gave up the ghost about 2006.
In the Fall of 1998, a new print player hit the scene with Puget
Sound Motorcycle Rider. It held that name for one issue and expanded
its coverage and changed its name to Northwest Motorcycle Rider
after a good response at the December International Motorcycle Show
held at the Washington State Convention Center. They lasted about
two more issues and hung their pens out to dry when capital demands
couldn’t keep up with the cash flow.
In 2000, an Oregon dealership funded 90% of the advertising found
in a new upstart, Ride Northwest. Despite the revenue, the
publication lasted less than a year.
For the Harley-Davidson crowd there was Thunder Press which
covered events up and down the West Coast and still does today. In
2003, they had to compete against a new rival, Full Throttle, a
Midwest publication that was selling franchises around the
country. About 2005, the regional franchise parted ways with Full
Throttle and they became Quick Throttle. Today the publication
provides a lot of advertising and is still going on a model of more than
50% advertising versus editorial ratio.
2002 saw the first issue of Bench Racer published by a former
Northwest Motorsports News editor. The publication was bent on
promoting vintage dirt track racing and its local heroes, but
injected a bit of T and A to spice things up a bit. Initially it was
free, but when the publisher came up short on funds to pay for the
monthly printing, it was moved to a cover price and subscriber model.
It didn’t last more than 24 months.
No one was getting rich in the local motorcycle print business.
Those who could hang on did and those who couldn’t faded.
In 2001, we took meetings at both Sports Etc. and Varsity
Communications. Both companies published sports magazines in the
Puget Sound. I felt if anyone could come up with a workable model to
actually make money by taking Sound RIDER! to print, it would be one
of these two. While the online magazine was doing fine financially,
we were continually asked by potential advertisers if we had a print
publication. I felt it was important to investigate it.
The meeting at Varsity was very telling. We worked on a white
board for several hours crunching the numbers and pouring over the
content and advertising found in the other local competitor’s
attempts. The plan would be for Sound RIDER! to provide all the
editorial content to Varsity and they would take a piece of the
advertising pie. But by the end of the morning we realized it
wouldn’t be lucrative for either party to jump into this. As the
Varsity CFO said holding up one of the local print mags – “This is
nothing more than a labor of love.” We haven’t pursued going to
print since and probably never will.
Since then we’ve seen other print magazines come and go in the
market. In 2006, we took a swipe at the Washington Biker Information
Guide which, along with Quick Throttle, thought it was
important to run a listing of Biker Friendly Bars. Wow – considering
the death toll of solo crashes with alcohol-related use, we were
shocked that others would run such a directory. The WBIG failed
about two issues after, and comes and goes with new owners now and
then.
And we’ve seen our share of online directories. I can’t remember
all their names but we watch them come and go annually. Many are
started by people who mean well, but the ability to juggle a day
job, free time and skunk work hours to make a website happen usually
means the website will get the least attention after a while. Where-to-ride type of sites, sites that do little more than troll RSS
feeds and otherwise provide small fragments of information at a time
to wandering eyes don’t last long in this flavor of the month high
tech world. No matter how many websites there are, there’s only 24
hours in a day to spend finding and reading them.
This all falls under a category I call “How much time ya got?”
You can plug newsgroup forums into that one as well. I get on them
from time to time and find them full of unhappy pundits, misleading
information and lots of useless chatter. One might argue that the
big ones have a lot of eye balls plugged into them but from what
I’ve seen most of those eyeballs belong to either new riders looking
for information and getting back mostly useless responses, or
unhappy cukaboos who like to see their words in print.
And who are the writers for all these failed magazines and
websites? On the local level there are few who carry much weight.
All things considered, you might now realize what we’re up to.
We’re working with nationally known names like David Hough, Helge
Pedersen, Dr. Flash Gordon; developing others like Dave Preston,
Colleen First and Sean Coker, issue after issue and getting into
subjects that are not only intriguing, but enriching. This is more
than one of those “I just learned how to build a website” or “I just
bought a magazine franchise from my brother” outfits.
With Sound RIDER! we’ve lived Northwest motorcycling in
publication for 10 years here drawing five to ten key pieces of
editorial every month and providing something for everybody. And
where applicable we’ve archived articles that have an evergreen
sheen so new readers/riders can dig into what they want to know more
about.
We’ve truly strived over the years to provide useful editorial
that graduates any rider to more miles, better gear and safer riding
techniques while showing them through one of the most beautiful
places to ride on earth. It’s always been our goal and it always
will be.
One of those beautiful places in the Northwest is known as the
Columbia River Gorge…
To be continued…
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