October 2002

Vol. 17, No. 10   What's this?

Skin Diver Magazine Shuts Down

from the October, 2002 issue of Undercurrent  

After half a century, Skin Diver magazine has shut its doors, a victim of decreased circulation, less advertising revenue and a business plan that didn’t work in the age of the Internet. Skin Diver was advertising driven, requiring a hotel or live-aboard to pony up $10,000 or more in advertising to get decent editorial coverage, which always touted the strength of the destination and ignored the downside.

In the face of competition from Rodale’s Scuba Diving, Skin Diver continued to rely on diving insiders; its editorial style changed little, and it never developed much of a Web presence. Scuba Diving’s publishers were smarter and more adaptable to the vicissitudes of publishing and diving. They prevailed.

In fact, Rodale has purchased the Skin Diver subscriber list and will begin delivering Scuba Diving to old Skin Diver subscribers While they purchased the name “Skin Diver,” they will not publish it monthly, though the Skin Diver name may show up here and there. Also, Skin Diver had published DAN’s Alert Diver for the past two years. How the closure of Skin Diver affects DAN remains to be seen.