You can view many articles from the first issue (hitting newstands on November 24) on the web site, including a "Home Hills" feature on Whitetail, written by some names that you might recognize.
The web site also allows you to subscribe to the magazine.
It's nice to finally have a magazine that won't treat the east coast as an afterthought!
- Scott
Nice article on Whitetail. It convinced me to subscribe. That means I now receive:
Ski
Skiing
Powder
Eastern Slopes
I love skiing out East. We have civilization. you won't go down the hill and find crazy Texans screaming their tribal yells... Believe it or not the East has better manners. We have better skiers because we have to ski on real snow, packed, ice or whatever nature intended on it to be... And besides, powder is for puffs.
Indeed! Congrats, guy!
Tom / PM
PS - Yup, I did see at least one very "familiar" name mentioned. 
Doesn't the US Postal service deliver to Florida? Why wait?
I signed up for the free evaluation copy and $14.95 option for the year. Which means that since I'm like most of the general public who never remembers or takes the time to cancel subscriptions, I've signed up for a lifetime membership. Hopefully my lifetime and the lifetime of Eastern Slopes are both long. Knock. Knock.
Well, I was conceived, born, bred (supposedly), raised, and always lived on the East Coast and I've only been to Texas once. Austin. Great city. Wouldn't consider it Texas. But I've been known to let out a war woop or two when skiing. Would send a Texan back home cowering for mama. On powder days, I have my warrior paint on at 6 AM.
>> Believe it or not the East has better manners.
Well, until the apocalyptic global tectonic shift occurs, New York city and Noo Yawkers remain on the East Coast. And so do the @#$!!^&*!@$# Yankees.
Scott needs to get that evil horned face you can post with on EpicSki.
This is a great idea and I've been waiting for this type of mag to come out. Now hopefully the east will get more of the respect it deserves.
I'm afraid I have some bad news to share about Eastern Slopes magazine. Eastern Slopes was set to launch this fall, but its publication has been placed on hold due to timing challenges. There has been a lot of work in recent months to get the magazine off the ground, but according to the publisher, the launch was misaligned with advertiser budget cycles.
The publisher is examining options at this point, and there is still hope that Eastern Slopes will roll out as the only magazine dedicated to east coast skiing. I will pass on any updates I receive.
In the meantime, the Eastern Slopes web site remains operational at:
http://www.easternslopes.com/
Thanks,
- Scott
Sorry to hear about the delay of the print magazine; I agree with the others that it's frustating to have eastern areas relegated to the back pages of ski magazines. Your article on Whitetail in Eastern Slopes was much more informative (and accurate) than the recent fluff piece in Ski Magazine. The "Genteel Whitetail" angle taken by Ski Mag was laughable, especially if you've ever skied Whitetail on a weekend.
Two sets of questions:
1) Will the Eastern Slopes web site continue to provide updated content this winter? Especially upcoming deals, snow conditions, latest news?
2) I noticed that the Eastern Slopes article and the Ski Magazine article shared the same picture of five people lounging in the snow. How did that happen? Is there a living to be made just hanging around ski areas getting photographed?
1) Updated content: In a thread over on Epic about Eastern Slopes, one person who was in the middle of writing an article for them spoke to two individuals at the offices of Eastern Slopes today (an editor, and the founder). The editor said she was in the office just to clean out her desk.
So, while web publishing is much less expensive than conventional print publishing, it certainly doesn't sound like its a good situation over there. Personally, I wouldn't hold out much hope for updates.
2) Photographs used by ski areas: That photograph was undoubtedly provided to both magazines by WT. While it is possible it was actually commissioned and taken at WT, I didn't see anything specific to WT in it, so I think its far more likely that it was a generic "stock" photo exclusively licensed by WT for advertising uses from some "stock" agency.
Stock photos are usually taken "on spec" (ie, "on speculation", ie, at their own expense) by photographers, and submitted to stock agencies for their huge files of photos.
Tom / PM
[This message has been edited by PhysicsMan (edited 11-19-2003).]
To address your questions, it's unlikely that the Eastern Slopes web site will get new content unless the print publication is given the green light again. I believe the photo included in the article was provided by Whitetail as a stock photo. (I had submitted some photos I took at Whitetail to the Photo Editor, but I'm not sure if the print version of the article was going to include more than that one stock photo.)
A lot of people put a great deal of effort into getting the magazine off the ground. I'm not an expert in print magazines, but I understand that it is enormously expensive to get a new publication into print. The plan for Eastern Slopes was to put out a monthly publication, although obviously the winter months would be the strongest and resonate the most with the intended audience. A magazine is funded through two sources: subscribers (to include newstand purchasers) and advertisers, but the bulk through advertising. And those two things have a relationship that is tied closely together -- without subscribers, you don't get advertisers. Ads are often sold months in advance, and you need to sell a lot of ads to be able to profitably print a magazine. So there's a big challenge in launching a magazine: you need to line up a lot of advertisers for the next few months (minimum), and you don't initially have a lot of subscribers or a track record to go by. A note from the publisher of Eastern Slopes indicates that a big problem they faced was being misaligned with advertising budgets. Resorts and companies had already allocated their advertising funds for winter 2003/04. That means the next round of winter advertising dollars wouldn't come until the following season -- and as a monthly publication, there were a lot of issues to put out between now and then.
I do hope that the business end of Eastern Slopes is able to resolve in some manner and that the publication can go forward. I was impressed by the professionalism, talent, and dedication of the Eastern Slopes team. If I hear any updates, I'll be sure to pass them on.
Many specialized academic and science publications are going the way of the web so why not ski publications?
Web content is cheaper to publish, timelier, and more interactive. In a timely business like skiing, these features give the web a big advantage over print publications. Many of the articles in Ski, for example, were written last season. They have nice photos and are well written but they are dated by the time of publication. A firsthand report published immediately on a web site or for that matter, a detailed report posted on a web forum, is far more valuable to the reader.
In a way, DCSki is the model for a regional ski publication, not Eastern Slopes. It's a pure web play with minimal overhead. Writers contribute articles for free because they love the sport and enjoy writing about it. Readers quickly alert others through comments if they sniff out any BS in the articles. It's self-policing and its a lot less biased than articles written in major print publications.
If Eastern Slopes had followed our model here at DCSki, it would be in much better shape. That's my two cents.
[This message has been edited by johnfmh (edited 11-19-2003).]
