Surfing magazine will be merged into Surfer magazine.
In a huge shakeup of action sports media, Surfing magazine will cease to exist as a standalone title, and its resources will be merged into Surfer magazine, according to multiple sources who confirmed the move to The Inertia staff.
All the publications are owned by Southern California-based The Enthusiast Network, a media company that operates numerous print and online titles covering motorsports, snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing, SUP, mountain biking, BMX, and more.
And if that news weren’t enough to swallow, The Enthusiast Network is reportedly carrying out a similar merger in snowboarding media, as Snowboarder magazine will cease to print but will apparently still operate digitally on some level given that the title has created iconic events like Superpark. Transworld Snowboarding will continue to print its magazine. TEN also shuttered the print facet of Canoe and Kayak magazine, one of the longest running paddlesports magazines in the country.
Longtime Surfing magazine photo editor Peter Taras, who is widely respected as a champion and mentor of premium surf imagery, confirmed the merger. “It’s a bummer,” he shared via email.
The changes will be effective beginning next month, according to news reports. No more information is available about the mergers at this time. The legacy surf publications have not reported the news to their audiences, nor has The Enthusiast Network.
Surfing magazine, with a focus on high performance and competitive surfing, has been in print for 53 years.
