Magazine devoted to surfing wipes out following long ride
The six-decade ride of Surfer, the first major magazine devoted to wave riding and surf culture, has ended in a wipeout, its top editor said this week.
The publication is shutting down, at least temporarily, 18 months after American Media, owner of The National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids, acquired Surfer’s previous publisher.
Todd Prodanovich, Surfer’s editor-in-chief since 2015, said the magazine’s staff got word late last week.
“We were told that we were being technically furloughed, but it was pretty clear there was no intention to bring the jobs back at any point, that essentially our duties had ended,” he said in an interview.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the media business, and publications that depend on advertisements for revenue have been especially affected.
An early version of Surfer started in 1960. John Severson, who surfed on a redwood board as a teenager in Southern California, founded the publication partly in reaction to the depiction of surf culture in Hollywood movies like “Gidget.” A lifelong surfer whocreated films, paintings and photographs depicting the lifestyle, Severson sold the magazine in the early 1970s after it had about 100,000 readers and plenty of ads. He died in 2017.
Surfer eventually ended up as part of the Adventure Sports Network, a division of TEN: Publishing. American Media bought the company, which also published magazines like Snowboarder, Bike and Canoe & Kayak, in February 2019.
In August, American Media merged with Accelerate360, a logistics firm. Both companies are controlled by
Chatham Asset Management, a hedge fund in New Jersey. After the merger, the American Media name was expunged. The new company’s media division is A360 Media.
Matt Warshaw, who was the editor-in-chief of Surfer in 1990 and runs the Encyclopedia of Surfing website, said the magazine was a must-read in its heyday.
“Surfer was the thing that we all shared, that we all looked at, that connected all of us,” he said in an interview.
On Thursday, for the first time in its history, according to the editor, Surfer endorsed a presidential candidate, urging readers to vote for the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. The next day, the members of the staff learned they would be furloughed. Prodanovich said he believed the shutdown had nothing to do with the endorsement.
During the 2016 campaign, American Media showed a preference for Donald Trump. Its chief executive and president, David Pecker, was a longtime friend of Trump’s, and The Enquirer published a series of articles attacking his political rivals, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton.
In a federal investigation of possibly illegal campaign contributions that started
after the 2016 election, American Media admitted to prosecutors that it had orchestrated a deal with onetime Playboy model Karen McDougal — who claimed a past affair with Trump — in an effort to aid the candidate’s White House bid.
In return for their cooperation, Pecker and another American Media executive, Dylan Howard, were protected from criminal prosecution.
American Media announced in April 2019 that it had reached a deal to sell The Enquirer and other tabloids to James Cohen, a son of the founder of the Hudson News franchise of newspaper and magazine shops. That deal has not closed. Chatham had pushed Pecker to sell The Enquirer after the publication found itself under federal scrutiny.
After the merger with Accelerate360, the company said Pecker would take on a new role, executive adviser.
On publishing the Biden endorsement in Surfer, Prodanovich said, “I just felt like, honestly, I would have a hard time sleeping at night not knowing that I did everything I could and used the platform of the magazine to support the person who cares about the environment.”