Marathon & Beyond sent out its last issue with the November/December 2015 issue, per this column from RW online.
Marathon & Beyond was a unique publication in the world or running. Focused on the marathon, but truly focused on long-form writing on all things running, Marathon & Beyond held its place for nineteen years in the running media world.
The media world changes daily, and not all for the better. Truth is, niche magazines are thriving, as while social media and websites have aided some magazines’s growth, for most publishing companies, they do much more work for less money. It is not enough to publish a fine print title. If one listens to the media experts, then, magazines must have a strong website, social media presense, newsletter and video content, then, how does one survive? But how does one do that with a small staff?
Marathon & Beyond battled those winds for 19 years, listening to their own drummer. They decided that it was time to call it a day, knowing perhaps, that they could not provide the magazine in the future that the remaining readers had come to expect.
In my mind, the end of Marathon & Beyond is a huge loss to the sport and the running community. We wish Jan Seeley, Rich Benyo and the rest of the publication team the very best.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARATHON & BEYOND
Marathon & Beyond, a bimonthly magazine about marathons and ultramarathons, will cease publication with its November/December 2015 issue. Richard Benyo, the magazine’s editor since it was launched in 1997, made the announcement in a note to contributors earlier this week.
“We feel its decline can be attributed to the move (especially among younger runners) to digital formats while at the same time the traditional long attention span of the running demographic has been undermined by new media,” Benyo wrote in an email to Runner’s World. “We retained a hard-core audience, but it wasn’t sufficient to sustain us; our circulation base dropped gradually over the past several years.”
To read the article in its original format, please go to: http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/marathon-beyond-to-cease-publication
Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys. Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."
View all posts
by Larry Eder
