This is (Very) Fly: A New Digital Fly Fishing Magazine
By Tom Chandler on Jun 8, 2007 in News
What appears to be a new online fly fishing magazine has sprung up, and since Moldy outed them (to me anyway), you should visit his site (fair’s fair).
Looks interesting and very counter-culture. Lots of ads too, which suggests they gave away the space or the fly fishing industry is willing to consider advertising in media channels that don’t come printed on paper.
About 70 pages of the above stuff is waiting for you; give it a visit and report back your impressions and thoughts.
See you in the comments heap, Tom Chandler.
Technorati Tags: fly fishing, fishing, fly fishing media, thisisfly
Chad Saunders | Jun 8, 2007 | Reply
I’m a sucker for anything fly fishing, but I really enjoyed thumbing through the magazine. Very user-friendly. My favorite thing I like about it is being able to show video clips and have links in the magazine. Very interactive!
kbarton10 | Jun 8, 2007 | Reply
This is exactly what the sport needed, it is the perfect weapon, at the precise moment in history when it is needed.
“Crockett and Tubbs Do Dryfly” - Sweetness!
I have always felt half-a-man because I enjoyed a sport that lacked the word, “X-treme” on the front of it. Now I can load my vest with Cocaine energy drinks and pose for the Hotties…
Fortunately this magazine caters to the GenX and GenME, whose combined attention span is about three f***king minutes. I dont thing we will suffer this incursion long.
TO the Editors of FLY: Y3r DoOdn3ss! Aw350m5, but why n0t teh 3nt1r3 z1n3, 1z n0t l33tsp3ak? That iz teh lam3n355!
Tom Chandler | Jun 9, 2007 | Reply
OK, that’s one for and one against. I agree; guerrilla magazines typically suffer high mortality rates pretty quickly, but then, I was interested in seeing the pages of advertising.
Is the fly fishing industry — most of which is positively stone age in its online marketing — really ready to commit a few bucks to digital media?
kbarton10 | Jun 9, 2007 | Reply
Sure it is.
Consider some of the surface benefits; low cost to market, less pine trees clearcut for paper, speed of update, low maintenance, and the lack of distribution costs - just to name a few.
Reinvest some of those costs saved into a bevy of talented authors, updating content daily - rather than monthly, and you have something someone pay consume with their morning coffee.
Add the factors of GenX and GenME being visually oriented, the decline of “t3h” written English word, and you have a medium that would make Gutenberg envious.
I see much of our printed content migrating to digital, with the Internet being the primary beneficiary. No more cigar chomping editors rejecting your life’s work, because their is “just not enough sex in it, never sell.”
We have witnessed the revolution in the audio medium already, Napster, Gnutella, etc, have redefined music. Movies are next, as the size of their digital footprint requires superb bandwidth to make their duplication viable.
Books and text are child’s play, not even as large as music files…and the audience is the entire world, not the limited community of the past.
While technology has always promised the “paperless office” - it has never materialized. I suspect the digital publishing phenomenom will be similar, close, but not the complete eradication of paper.
ethanopia | Jun 10, 2007 | Reply
I like it, and since I’m a graphic designer, I like the look of it, just my speed. I love overly designed complicated David Carson-ish junk, it really gives it character and brings the story to life.
It still looks like a cool magazine, not like all these blogs built around the same templates.. wink wink ;-)
Tom Chandler | Jun 11, 2007 | Reply
A little art direction isn’t a terrible thing, though there are places where readability has suffered. Online mags are fertile ground for some cutting edge design — far beyond the “big fish, facing left” cookie cutter approach of the national fly fishing mags.
As for blogs, they’re still new, and they tend to look alike, but we gotta ask: how often is that digital magazine being updated?
KW Morrow | Jun 16, 2007 | Reply
I converted my writing strategy to 100% on-line over the past few years. Printed mags are unsustainable, eco-disastrous, dinosaurs of the industrial age.
This is Fly is the leading edge of the new age of fly fishing mags.
The guides and outfitters have already woken up and smelled the coffee here in the past few years. They’re spending their money on-line and focusing on feature coverage in on-line media as well as TV and print.
But we know the mfg’s fuel the BUSINESS that the media lives on. The outdoor industry was recently turned on its collective ear when Jim Zumbo went down in flames over a 3-day weekend for something he said in his blog. Outdoor Life dumped him, Cabelas dumped him, Gerber dumped him, all following Remington’s less than 24-hour delayed response from the time he posted it. He was fried by Monday for something he wrote on-line on Friday. Why? The response from ON-LINE READERS overwhelmed the email servers at Outdoor Life and Remington within a few hours of Jim hitting the “Post” button. The CEOs of all these companies expressed that this really changed the way they view marketing. They had “no idea” so many people were reading this on-line content, or how instantaneously they could get consumer feedback, etc.
As I exclusively write for on-line publishers nowadays, I have sort of finger on the pulse of this phenomenon. If someone doesn’t finance a story idea, it isn’t going to get done very often. 2 years ago, it was hard to talk to anyone in the biz about underwriting an article for on-line publication. Today, you mention it casually, and they come crawling out of the woodwork…via EMAIL. But only if you can demonstrate results.
I know a guy who makes high-end custom bamboo fly rods. 2 years ago, he became a sponsor of http://www.flyanglersonline.com hoping to gain a few customers. I think it cost him about $500/year. In that two years advertising ONLY on that one fly fishing website, he has gone from needing a few new customers to having a 4 1/2 year BACKLOG of orders. Considering his cheapest fly rod is about $1000, that was $1000 well spent on on-line advertising. Don’t you think?
Tom Chandler | Jun 16, 2007 | Reply
KMorrow: I think This is Fly is a cool piece of work, but I’m not at all sold on the idea of it being the “leading edge of a new age of fly fishing magazines.”
Essentially, it’s an online version of the print magazine, and while that’s a comfortable format, it lacks the two-way interactivity that is defining the online world today.
I don’t know what’s going to shake out of the social networking/blogging/online publishing world, but I’ll bet it ultimately looks a little more like this blog than it does This is Fly.
After all, where are the ad dollars ultimately going to end up; on the pages of a once-a-month online magazine (where they essentially remain static forever), or on the pages of an electronic publication that’s updated daily and commands a large group of engaged readers who actually participate?
Don’t get me wrong; I agree with most of what you’re saying and love the content of This is fly, but instead of considering them the leading edge, I tend to think they’re (in their current format) more the final evolution of the old format.
Don’t underestimate the power of social media and engagement. Your bamboo rod builder did well with online advertising, but Chris Raine and Jim Reams (both hollow builders) sold several years of rod production in a few months without advertising.
They got a lot of play on the self-defined online bamboo rod community, and now neither will see the light of day for a couple years.
Thanks for commenting. If you get a chance, use the contact form on the blog to send me an e-mail so I have your address.
KW Morrow | Jun 16, 2007 | Reply
Tom,
You might be right about LAST evolution of the old-fashioned FF mag vs. the advance guard of the new wave. I’ll have to give that some thought. But it is a TRUE cross-over to be sure. And a very well done one at that.
I think the next evolution of FF media is actually going to be a hybrid of all that have gone before. I think the advanced graphics, animation, and multi-media format of This Is Fly combined with the interactive and even contributory nature of blogs and forums is what we see beginning to coalesce. The only limitation on the Internet right now is the end-user’s willingness and ability to convert to a high-speed connection. High-speed is absolutely necessary for interactive multi-media formats like This Is Fly.
I do believe that blogs are replacing forums and I’ll tell you why: control of content. Bulletin boards have been TOO “interactive.” The “free expression” context of these free-flow, rough-and-tumble forums made it poor form to delete and edit anonymous contributions very aggressively. But a blog has a single owner. And that means the readers are commenting in the “living room” of the owner. The blogger controls the topic and usually the scope of the conversation with frequent updates. And he/she doesn’t get hammered for editing inappropriate comments or objectionable material. So most of the more educated, sophisticated, decent Internet users are migrating to their favorite topical blogs and kicking the discussion forum habit.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see This Is Fly add a blog feature and other interactive features for reader contributions as their readership grows. Modules of a website cost money. But they can be added and debugged one at a time as use trends and demand expand.
Tom Chandler | Jun 17, 2007 | Reply
KW: I talk about the blog vs message board issue on my Engagement Principles marketing blog (at least in the business sense).
My take is that “Directed” online media tend to operate at the level of the director; undirected media tend to operate at the level of those willing to post the most (or troll the most).
There are some excellent, interesting message boards in the fly fishing universe, but many of the biggest seem to suffer periodic meltdowns or a very high noise factor.
I’m not sure the only barrier to adoption of rich media is high-bandwidth access (3.72% of TU visitors use dialup, 25% are “unknown” and the rest are DSL/cable/T1).
Rich media experience plenty of difficulties (expensive/time consuming to produce, not scannable, etc), and I think the future might still be surprisingly text-based.
In any case, great discussion. I expect we’ll see some interesting things happen over the next five years…
KW Morrow | Jun 17, 2007 | Reply
We agree on directed vs. undirected Internet media and the lowest common denominator factor. In my conversations with high end consumers (actually not necessarily high income, but biggest 1/2 of spenders) and with businesses, most have a really uneasy feeling in the pits of their stomachs about the trash that clutters up the discussion boards of most sites. This causes the bigger spenders not to use them much if at all, and that causes the advertisers to spend reluctantly if at all.
On the other hand, all of those advertisers covet honest, respectful reviews and input from “joe consumer.” And they want that from the Internet. The question is: how do they get that without having to suffer the constant mudslinging of a bunch of bubbas with nothing to lose and nothing better to do than cause trouble? The undirected “forums” haven’t been able to strike a constructive balance (by and large).
For myself, I go to discussion boards essentially to read the contributions of a few good posters. In the process, you have to wade through the muck. Since I first tossed my hunting cap into the Internet ring back in 1995, the proportion of good content to trash talking has only gotten worse. Today, most of the folks who truly have something worthwhile to say have decided they don’t need the grief of undirected forums. So they’ve quit posting there very much at all. Now, when I log on to sift through a forum for worthwhile content, it is far less rewarding and far more frustrating than it used to be.
Enter the blogosphere. Someone who actually cares and has something interesting to say starts a blog and posts topical conversation starters. He/she then moderates the comments and/or screens the participants. Trolls are expunged quickly. Customer feedback and field test data can still be gathered at warp speed, many blogs have weekly traffic rivaling that of most magazines’ monthly circulations, and there is still a high level of credibility due to the “peer reviewed” nature of the whole deal. It’s a much better way to go.
But there is a LOT of room for rich media growth now that most of the market place is on high-speed. Animated illustrations are probably the most useful. But sound and video files imbedded also serve to illustrate points and convey parts of a message that are very tough with the written word…especially in an increasingly less literate and more visually and aurally tuned in culture.
That’s why I am excited about This Is Fly. It is the first bona fide attempt to bring a truly multi-media platform to fly fishing on-line media…perhaps outdoors media in any meaningful, organized way. As for cost, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a cable TV show! And it’s even got cost advantages over traditional slick print magazines. But perhaps most importantly to the future of fly fishing, it is reaching out to a younger demographic with a fresh perspective on fly fishing. And THAT is something we should all get behind. The old-timers are “in.” They aren’t going anywhere. And they like the bells and whistles of rich media too…once they become familiar with it. Our “outreach” needs to be focused on creating and informing the NEXT generation of fly anglers. And one look at This Is Fly lets you know that is exactly where they are going.