After more than half a century on newsstands, Surfing Magazine has wiped out.
Publisher TEN (The Enthusiast Network) made the Sophie’s Choice of keeping Surfer magazine going, and some of Surfing Magazine‘s editorial staff will bleed into the other publication. TEN, which is based in El Segundo, will also keep a Santa Ana office.
Surfing Magazine was highly respected right up until the end, as it was the official magazine of both the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing and the National Scholastic Surfing Association.
What was originally titled International Surfing Magazine was founded in 1964 by Orange County surfwear executive Dick Graham, who would become editor/publisher/writer/photographer, and fellow shutterbug Leroy Grannis, who The New York Times once hailed as the “godfather of surf photography.”
John Severson created Surfer in Orange County around the same time, and both magazines competed with one another for years.
Graham and Grannis’ publication was acquired by New York magazine publisher Adrian B. Lopez, who relocated Surfing Magazine to the East Coast but eventually brought it back to Southern California.
Australian millionaire Clyde Packer bought the magazine in 1980, after settling in Laguna Beach, and Surfing was published out of a San Clemente office for 15 years.
Both Surfing and Surfer were acquired in 2001 by Primedia, who sold them in 2007 to supermarket magnate Ron Burkle’s Source Interlink.
That company went belly up in 2014 before reemerging as TEN in 2015, when the Santa Ana office opened.
A Surfing Magazine Facebook page admission that “It’s our last hurrah!” was met with a Jeff Spicoli-worthy send-off from one Larry Lujan last Wednesday afternoon:
“Later days-better lays.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.