Old Cover
In July 2008 we subscribed to Camping Life magazine. Recently we realized we hadn’t received an issue in a while, so we went online to their website (campinglife.com) to check things out. The site existed and showed excerpts of the latest issue. We bookmarked the site and decided to wait until our next mail delivery to see if an issue might finally appear. When it didn’t, we went back to the site to try to contact someone. Now the site is called Bass and Walleye Boats magazine even though the URL is still campinglife.com. What the heck?! Attempts to contact anyone via the site lead to missing pages. Thinking the site might have been hijacked, we googled for any info or other subscribers also wondering where their magazine went. No luck. We don’t know what happened, but Camping Life magazine appears to be no more.
Is this another example of the economy getting to the RV industry? We’ve read in the news of many RV manufacturers going out of business or being in trouble. The Affinity Group (the parent company for Good Sam Club, Camping World, and Woodall’s and more, and also publishes numerous RV and outdoor life magazines) is the publisher for Camping Life. It just so happens that in early March, the Affinity Group made Moody’s list of companies most likely to go bust this year. RV Travel reported that Good Sam Club is suspending their print magazine, Highways, beginning this August in favor of an online digital version only. (Advertisement revenue appears to be down. A digital version certainly would save costs.) Perhaps Camping Life is the first to go of the Affinity Group? If so, it would have been nice to have been notified, versus just leaving subscribers to wonder. Caveat Emptor – particularly in this economy!
UPDATE: We managed to email Camping Life (and get a response) on Monday, 4/13. Their website is back to normal, though no one at the magazine would respond to our repeated question as to what happened to it over the weekend.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Camping Life Magazine – another victim of the bad economy?
Old Cover
In July 2008 we subscribed to Camping Life magazine. Recently we realized we hadn’t received an issue in a while, so we went online to their website (campinglife.com) to check things out. The site existed and showed excerpts of the latest issue. We bookmarked the site and decided to wait until our next mail delivery to see if an issue might finally appear. When it didn’t, we went back to the site to try to contact someone. Now the site is called Bass and Walleye Boats magazine even though the URL is still campinglife.com. What the heck?! Attempts to contact anyone via the site lead to missing pages. Thinking the site might have been hijacked, we googled for any info or other subscribers also wondering where their magazine went. No luck. We don’t know what happened, but Camping Life magazine appears to be no more.
Is this another example of the economy getting to the RV industry? We’ve read in the news of many RV manufacturers going out of business or being in trouble. The Affinity Group (the parent company for Good Sam Club, Camping World, and Woodall’s and more, and also publishes numerous RV and outdoor life magazines) is the publisher for Camping Life. It just so happens that in early March, the Affinity Group made Moody’s list of companies most likely to go bust this year. RV Travel reported that Good Sam Club is suspending their print magazine, Highways, beginning this August in favor of an online digital version only. (Advertisement revenue appears to be down. A digital version certainly would save costs.) Perhaps Camping Life is the first to go of the Affinity Group? If so, it would have been nice to have been notified, versus just leaving subscribers to wonder. Caveat Emptor – particularly in this economy!
UPDATE: We managed to email Camping Life (and get a response) on Monday, 4/13. Their website is back to normal, though no one at the magazine would respond to our repeated question as to what happened to it over the weekend.