lee crane

While cruising facebook today a status update caught my eye. A former Future Snowboarding employee said, ” . . . is in shock. He is a free agent.”

It appears that Future Snowboarding has moved forward into the past. In an 11 o’clock meeting today employees were told that Future Snowboarding would be shutting down immediately because “it just wasn’t working.”

What that apparently meant was that Future Network USA President Jonathan Simpson-Bint was interested in action sports from a group publishing perspective. When the action sports division failed to launch or acquire a group of magazines and instead fired away with one growing print title (and dominant website) and a bi-annual business publication, it just didn’t have the scale for the division to function.

Even though employees believed the magazine was “doing well,” it apparently wasn’t enough for Bint and his goals for the company. “He doesn’t really do things half way,” a former employee said. “The group was set up to support 10 magazines and when that didn’t happen, I guess he just decided to pull the plug.”

Group Publisher Jason Ford had reportedly known about the situation for a few weeks, and had diligently tried to set up a deal (sale?) where the magazine could continue publishing, but in the end was unable to close a workable deal.

I never agreed with the idea that launched Future Snowboarding: that the world needed a magazine that appealed to the casual, recreational snowboarder who was not interested in pros, or “the industry.” But with each issue the Future crew moved further and futher away from that idea and showed everyone that it was possible to give the old, cliche snowboard magazine a new spin.

They did it with a fresh voice and a new style. And snowboarding media was better because of them. While I don’t really read print magazines anymore, I will miss it, and I will certainly miss their website.