In This Issue

Something I'm hearing a little too much of lately is how print mags are dead and electronic media is taking over. People say it with varying degrees of condescension or sympathy, and it hurts my ears to hear it. I mean, how do you react when someone says your entire livelihood is an obsolete netherworld and you're nothing more than a toilet bug scurrying beneath the throne of the Mouse King?  

But let's face it. By the time this issue hits the shops, the 2007 WCT event at Teahupo'o will be almost a month old, and even if you didn't watch it live via "Heat On Demand" on the ASP's website, you still already know the outcome from photos and press releases circulating around the World Wide Web. So what are we supposed to do -- not report on one of the biggest professional surfing events in existence, even though one of our East Coast brothers, Damien Hobgood, won the whole thing. Heck no, we simply redirect our angle of coverage and move accordingly (in this issue's case, getting a behind-the-scenes take from CJ Hobgood).  

Before the dot-com fiasco crumbled like a month-old Twinkie seven years ago, I myself got a taste of the proverbial pie, seizing an opportunity to contribute to Swell.com, which would later serve as the foundation for Surfline.com's editorial content, the most comprehensive and respected surfing website in the world. I remember the Swell.com brain trust -- which included revered wordsmiths like Evan Slater, Steve Hawk, Marcus Sanders, and Matt Walker -- explaining, almost defensively, "If this is going to be done, we want to make sure it's done right." Like they really had to sell me on the concept. I mean, these guys were my heroes. I would've followed them into Hades had they asked me, anything to be considered a part of their peer group. The pay wasn't half-bad, either. 

Fast forward to 2007, and a large majority of the writers, photographers, designers, and ad sales people involved with Swell.com, not to mention less-successful sites like Hardcloud.com and Bluetorch.com, are working in print media. So what does that say about the merits of ink? I'm not such a nostalgic idealist to think that print mags somehow reflect surfing's most simplistic, essential elements -- board, rider, wave -- because sooner or later you're gonna need wax, baggies, fins, fin keys... a laptop even, to maximize your experience of what surfing's become in this millennium. But there is a certain wave of anticipation that comes with seeing the cover of a new mag, then holding it in your hands, flipping through the pages, and engulfing that unique creation. I got that same feeling as a 12-year-old when the newest issue of The Uncanny X-Men would hit the stands at my neighborhood comic book shop. Pure, tactile bliss. Besides, "Dude, you got the cover!" will always kick the shit out of "Dude, you scored the home page," the latter of which basically translates to "you got the big pic from yesterday's sesh." Not exactly an integral part of East Coast history. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm as addicted to surfing websites as anyone and rarely go a day without making my rounds: Surfline.com, Surfingthemag.com, Surfermag.com, Transworldsurf.com, SurfKDH.com, Localswell.com... In fact, I'd go so far as to say that next to Matt Warshaw's tome, The Encyclopedia Of Surfing, Surfline.com is the most reliable one-stop resource in the business. But as a news man, it always hurts to get scooped, even when it's by a website. Take the recent subtropical phenomenon known as Andrea, for example. Here was a swell event of epic proportions happening right in ESM's backyard, with every person in this office playing a part in its ultimate documentation. Plus, one of my closest friends and favorite surfers, Jesse Hines, was in town to get his piece of the action. Two days later, the whole world had at their fingertips everything they'd ever need to know about Andrea thanks to the sites mentioned above, as well as countless random chat rooms and online forums clogging cyberspace's digital arteries. Between clinging to Mez's furry shoulders on the back of his ski at giant Pump House and getting the cleanest, deepest tuberide I've ever gotten in Florida at Sebastian Inlet, I was naturally frothing to write this story. But what could I say about Andrea that these websites, complete with photo and video links, hadn't already said? In the end, it was no big loss, as we opted to run with Will Skudin's one-of-a-kind instructional piece on nor'easters.  

As much entertainment and information as they provide us with daily, websites are also the ecstasy of surf journalism -- an instantaneous rush of colors, shapes, sounds, and words -- a visual and auditory freak-out that, while fun, is also rather short-lived and difficult to navigate. And after absorbing their content in all its headlines and minutiae, the experience can leave you utterly depleted of serotonin, strung-out from the sensory overload. It feels kinda dirty, too, clicking from link to link while flash ads and pop-up diversions and billboard-sized sub-links distort the real story. It's like you spent the night sharing bed space with two separate sex partners ­ editorial and advertising. 

But a magazine is an entirely different drug -- classic, simple, honest, like a cold beer on a lazy summer afternoon. It's permanent and timeless, and it's everywhere you go: on the rack at the surf shop, in the back seat of your buddy's car, on the coffee table at home, two years later in the garage while moving out of your apartment. Nothing -- not a power surge, Y2K, or your nimrod roommate forgetting to pay the server bill -- will keep it from gracing your senses over and over again. You can touch it, fold it, pocket it, take it to the beach, wrap fish with it, wipe your butt with it if you want. OK fine, one can argue that with wireless internet, you can just the same take a laptop to the beach or the toilet. Of course, you'd look like a dork.  

When it comes to Jesse Hines and his place in the historic Andrea swell, we'll never be able to offer him instant access to the photographic results of that or any other session. We won't be able to lead him to an audio feed providing a lensman or forecaster's insight. And we can't upload a video link so Jesse can view his best tuberides. But there's one thing we can do that no website can.  

We can put the guy on our cover. By Matt Pruett