Budgets and staffing do both play major role here but honestly, the latter more than the former these days. Fact is we have budget (though not a massive amount) that we aren't spending because it's actually very difficult to find people who combine the ability to write, desire to write, actually 'getting it' and having the time to write. It's something we've spent a lot of time looking into this summer, especially after the success of the Revision article Sklar & I put together. To that end, we (the two of us) are working more content in the same vein, with Matt doing the bulk of the legwork (and getting paid to do so) and me editing things, shaping as they go along, writing some bits etc. However he, and almost all our other contributors for that matter, have real world jobs that slow things down.
We also would like to put money in to some more journalists who want to write higher end investigative or in-depth content. If you're out there, hit me up with some ideas (twig@newschoolers.com).
There is also a flipside to this question though and that is: How you define 'good content'? Taking Powder as an example, I love reading it, I think it's a fantastic mag. But magazines sell magazine expensive advertising, resulting in bigger budgets for content etc (in general they also majorly struggling). The majority of the 'good' stuff mags publish online is recycled magazine content. It just isn't cost effective to produce content like that solely for the web all the time, something the many, many magazines out there that have bailed on print and gone online have discovered (and the good content quickly dries up or at least becomes more irregular). Is guess I'd ask: Is content good if it costs 20 times as much to produce as it brings in? The answer is probably that it can be but if that's all you do, you go out of business.
The reality is it's all about finding a balance, quick content to generate traffic, balanced with quality content for the regular user to get their . We're trying to find that and tipping more towards producing better stuff, with varying degrees of success. We're always trying to do new things and figure out that balance. I'm definitely not claiming we have it anywhere close to perfect, but I'd be surprised if the 'quality content producers' do either, as evidenced by how many sizeable action sports titles have disappeared.
In answer to your question, "what could we do to put out more good content regularly?", I guess the first thing would be find more good writers, who aren't flakey, can work to deadlines and have a flair for the work. The other thing would be to actually share and promote the good stuff when it does appear, because if it doesn't do well, despite being subjectively 'quality', then it's still not successful content. There is a whole other issue with content distribution I haven't even touched on but that would help. It would also help to hear what you want to see.
**This post was edited on Oct 19th 2017 at 7:44:15am
