Then
I’ve been in the media business since graduating from Dartmouth College. Since then I have worked in every form of media except major motion pictures.
After winning a couple awards for reporting and editing at small New Jersey newspapers, I moved to B2B publishing at Fieldston Publications Inc., the publishing division of Washington, DC-based Fieldston Co. The company’s newsletters and data products covered multi-billion-dollar companies in the energy and freight transportation fields. When I was the publishing director, we grew the number of titles and revenue, launched new daily products, and created the first daily price index to cover a major fossil fuel (coal), licensed by Reuters.
I was also the marketing chief for Fieldston overall, and created a branding campaign that tied together all the company’s assets and increased its visibility and revenue. Fieldston was sold in the late 1990s for multi-millions: The consulting company was sold to Hagler Bailly Inc. (a Nasdaq company, since acquired) and most of Fieldston’s publishing assets were bought by UK-based Argus Media.
After that, I did my own thing. In 2001 – with ESPN’s purchase of B.A.S.S. Inc. pending – I launched BassFan.com to cover professional bass fishing as a sport, the first time it had ever been done. We eventually grew that site into a network of vertical outdoor sports sites (bass, walleye, etc.) under the OutdoorsFan Media (OFM) umbrella. We were pioneers and trailblazers in several areas:
- Coverage of fishing as a professional sport, daily news coverage of fishing, digital coverage of fishing.
- Independent daily news and digital coverage of multiple competitive outdoor sports – at the time our traffic beat ESPN’s in the same space.
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Back in the day on the ESPN set, me on the left…. Creating outdoor sports’ first “must read” daily content.
- Creating the BassFan World Rankings of professional bass anglers – literally one of the most complex ranking methodologies ever created in pro sports – which appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
- Defining, redefining and opening up new community-driven niches in the outdoor web space, including media niches (macro and micro enthusiast niches, web radio, etc.).
- Creating and selling customized ad and promotional packages rather than just banner ads.
- Creating competitive fishing’s largest grassroots membership program using a membership model new to the industry.
In July 2007, we sold OFM – at the time the world’s largest publisher of daily outdoor sports news – to InterMedia Outdoors, a division of New York, NY-based media investment fund InterMedia Partners, now owned by Outdoor Sportsman Group. To our knowledge, OFM was the first profitable (no venture capital) web-media company sold anywhere in the world.
During the OFM years, I also co-hosted ESPN’s Loudmouth Bass TV show (billed as the PTI of pro bass fishing but…not exactly), authored the pretty well-received novel “Dark Woods,” billed as “Jaws in the woods” by the publisher – check out the reviews on amazon.com if you’re curious – and co-authored the book “Serious Grouse Hunting” which is either the best or worst grouse-hunting book ever written!
After the sale of OFM, I was involved in launching a few more businesses focused on enthusiasts, one of which was Threat Dynamics, the first military-tech small arms training facility ever open to the general public which was sold in early 2010.
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Now
After doing just about every form of media in various ways, now it’s all coalesced into digital. Under Sasquatch Media we manage our own properties, and under John21 Media Services we help a few other companies succeed in the digital space.
Current Sasq properties include the following, with more always on the drawing board:
- Jay Kumar’s BassBlaster: #2 daily read in bass fishing, the #1 fishing market in the world.
- Target Walleye: #1 read in the northern-tier US/southern Canada fishing market.
Our boutique shops do a wide variety of things – content, marketing, social media promotion and more – everything cost-effective and geared to a business purpose. We are continually and uniquely informed by the work we do for ourselves and others.
All the success that we have is credited to God.