Outdoor Media News

Longtime Outside magazine owner Larry Burke is launching a quarterly travel magazine called, awkwardly, Outside's Go. (Probably a wee "Outside's" above a big "Go" on the cover.) According to the New York Post, the first issue, slated for March, will be polybagged with 100,000 copies of Outside; the new magazine's planned rate base (guaranteed circulation) is 200,000. Burke is teaming up with Outside's founding publisher, Don Welsh, to launch the new venture. It's aiming at a relatively untapped market for travel mags: well-heeled male readers, age 35 and over. The editor will be Kent Black. Outside currently publishes two travel annuals; presumably, those will be dropped.

At the other end of the outdoor media glossiness spectrum, Mountain Gazette, the 10-times-a-year alternative outdoor magazine published out of Colorado and distributed mostly in ski towns in the West, has been purchased by an investment group consisting of financial consultant Paul Gibb; Marc Sani, publisher of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News; and Felix Magowan, publisher of Velo News and Inside Triathlon. Plans are to upgrade the print quality (it's now on newsprint), go monthly, and increase distribution to 100,000 copies a month. The Mountain Gazette was a pioneering outdoor magazine in the 1970s, publishing writers from Edward Abbey to David Roberts. John Fayhee, who resurrected the Gazette in 1999 after a two-decade hiatus, will remain editor under the new management.