Announced yesterday that they are merging with Peloton magazine. At first I thought that Peloton would be going away, but it is VN that will disappear.
This is undoubtedly the right decision as VN has been kinda directionless for many years, struggling to find their place in the Internet era when race results are immediate. But as someone who anxiously waited every 2 weeks for the next issue of VN to show up at the shop, this is still a major bummer.
Thanks for the heads up. I will give the podcast a listen.
I turned off to VN a few years ago – definitely felt aimless but would sometimes have fantastic content.
On the other hand, I found Peloton to have amazing packaging but very thin writing. After picking up a few issues, it felt like one big advertisement. Slick but no substance.
In some ways, this could really be complementary. I also read the cyclingtips references. That is far and away the best cycling news/in-depth feature/podcast/personality combo going. They will undoubtedly add to PeloVelo/Veloton but hopefully not at the expense of CT’s existing content/culture/ethos.
Best cycling magazine ever…**“Winning*”. I have issues with Greg Lemond on the cover from 1986 Tour victory, 1988 Hampsten Giro, Rebecca Twigg and one other. As far as current publications, they’re nothing but marketing anymore.
I’ve had a Peloton magazine subscription because they have beautiful photography. Its a coffee table magazine. Received word they were merging a couple weeks ago by email:
Dear reader,
Thank you for being a part of VeloNews magazine and supporting the creation of powerful storytelling about the sport of cycling. Your magazine is going to look a little different starting in January and we wanted to inform you of some changes we are very excited about. VeloNews magazine will be merging with Peloton magazine bringing together the top two forces in cycling journalism. Your new improved magazine will have Peloton magazine on the cover— but inside you’ll find the combined work of the VeloNews and Peloton teams. With your print + digital subscription, you will still have the same access to VeloNews.com member exclusive stories.
All the writers you know and love are still very much part of the new, expanded magazine: The VeloNews European team of Andrew Hood, Sadhbh O’Shea, Jim Cotton, and James Startt will continue to deliver their expert analysis. Here in the U.S., Betsy Welch, Greg Kaplan, and Ben Delaney will continue to contribute, as will the technical wizard Lennard Zinn.
In the new magazine, you will also get to enjoy gear pieces from another one of our brands, CyclingTips, with the work of their expert staff like James Huang and Dave Rome.
And of course, you will also get to enjoy the work from all the well-respected authors, photographers, and designers who have made Peloton the award-winning magazine it is today. For eleven years Peloton has assembled top international talent in print like Jered and Ashley Gruber, Paul Maunder, Clive Pursehouse, Matthew Burton, and a certain John Wilcockson — a former longtime editor of VeloNews magazine.
We hope you enjoy the new combined efforts, and we look forward to delivering many more years of the world’s best cycling journalism in print, digital and video. If you have any questions about these changes, or need additional information, please feel free to contact us at support@outsideinc.com.
Sincerely,
The VeloNews Team
Man, that sure sounds close to exactly how I predicted this would all shake out over on the CT forum. It’s so funny to read the “we have no idea what it will look like” replies from the team, when your average reader can call it months in advance.
Devil’s advocate, I doubt that they hadn’t considered the current result as an option. More likely they were considering multiple cases, and not willing to divulge the various options prior to setting a direction.
They may have even left it open-ended in order to see what people said with the ambiguity, in order to semi-outsource ideas and/or prior judgement of possible results. I have no direct knowledge, but a large merger like this is probably quite a challenge when dealing with parties from all sides (internal & external). Keeping tight lips probably makes sense on a number of levels.
We all have seen what happens when something falls short or heads in a different direction from the originally stated one. People can be extremely harsh.
I’m going to be happy if the mailbox delivers a new Peloton print mag with the same beautiful pics, some Huang/Rome gear reviews, and a dash of Delaney/Zinn. Some eye candy and reason to put down the phone at night.
As an outsider with no real connection to either of those (with the exception of random readings of online articles), this seems like one of the more positive mergers in recent memory.
When you hide half your content behind a paywall I tend not to want to utilize you.
Copy that, as I said, I’ve not followed the full details here. PW do bite in real ways.
But like any other “business” making a living for the members is also important.
Just in case you didn’t know, they all got bought by Outside. I count myself as one of the folks who is trying to be optimistic, but also terrified we will end up with all the generic ad copy you see from other places. Stuff like “our favorite helmets of 2022” and you click it and there are 35 “favorite” helmets.
I get your point about keeping their options open, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to come up with “Velonews covers racing, Peloton has great culture, travel, and photos, and CyclingTips covers the tech stuff in detail”.
Agreed.
I have long been of the opinion that this is the way the print industry survives / evolves. Give me an experience that I want / enjoy. make it a premium experience, something to look forward to. Book bind, heavyweight paper, gorgeous photography, long form stories, etc. and I will consume it.
But too often the bean counters come in and start slashing the quality of the product in order to save costs…stable binding, thinner, cheap paper, etc.
The old LAVA magazine was great for triathletes…heavy stock paper, great articles, etc. but they killed it off.
Hence my initial reaction above that they were killing off Peloton and merging it into VN…so I am glad it was the reverse (even though I have had a decades long connection to VN). Hopefully they add some better content to Peloton and nurture it.
Yup, seen it related to the large swath that Outside is covering from media to their events acquisitions as well. I posted my own thoughts related to the CyclingTips and PinkBike avenues in those threads. I am just not as familiar with VN & P specifically.
Thanks for the heads up @Power13 I barely by a magazine these days and I am glad the Velonews.com website isn’t going away. I suspect that this (others doing the same) will be one of the main drivers for the change.
I hope they put Fred Drier back onto the VN podcast. New host is drier, not Drier. I’m ready to unsubscribe.
Oh god no…agreed 100% about Delaney being very dry, but Drier was the worst.
But they definitely need to find a good host.
What’s so bad about them trying to monetize their hard work? They have to make money to support it somehow, I think I may prefer this to the wall of ads so many sites have (an ad for a product right next to the review of that product…).
Outside scooped up everything and is letting the best of each medium take foothold. It’s not bad at all
I am fine with the wall of ADs. If i have to pay to view the article I just move on.
Why even go to velonews.com unless you pay and then your not bringing in the same traffic as free content
Agree to disagree.