Best advice
I just reached a record number of pages read in any trade magazine. The magazine was your fall issue of SAM.
As a neophyte and a learner, I have been searching for the truth on the most effective way of working with the editorial staffs of ski publications. I believe your article may be the best advice you will ever receive on the subject. I also found your article on newspapers to be informative.
Fred Schaeffer, Pres.,
Salomon/North America
Killington correction
Sir:
I noticed in your Fall issue a paragraph which referred to a Killington agreement with various other areas to offer free skiing to season passholders at these areas before December 15 and after April 1. If this seemed like too good a deal, it was! Somewhere along the line SAM got the facts confused.
Killington offers season passholders of six areas (one each in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia) a reduction of $3 on a day ticket prior to December 15 or after April 1. We will also offer a discount of 10 per cent on any midweek or weekend vacation plan during those same periods.
Scott Van Pelt,
Killington, Vt.
On measuring beauty
Sir:
We much enjoyed reading “On measuring beauty,” your October 73 editorial on the Forest Service’s Visual Management System. Your approach was well balanced, and you and Steve Bradley point out well the pitfalls that await those would quantify “beauty.” I think that Forest Service landscape architects share this apprehension. On the other hand, we all know that environmental matters which cannot be quantified tend to be ignored — until some group or individuals become so outraged that the issue lands in court.
Our Landscape Management Program was devised to provide one (the visual) of many inputs into true quality land management. It also helps to prevent unnecessary confrontations with citizen groups who object, and rightly so, when the functional approach is carried too far. This program has attained some notable successes, especially on some timber harvesting and powerline installation projects — projects that become far less noticeable and/or much more attractive to the landowners (the public). The point here being that in these areas the timber is still being harvested and the kilowatts are still flowing. In other words, our program’s purpose is not to stop action, but to establish a modus operandi within which appropriate action can continue — in tune with its surroundings as well as its function.
National Forest Landscape Management, Volume I is an effort to produce a document for our field people explaining some of the principles involved — so that they can make logical decisions rather than adopting a doctrinaire or “cookiecutter” approach.
The proposed “Visual Management System” will be the first Volume II chapter to be printed. It will suggest a way of carrying Landscape Management through an inventory and analysis process to arrive at quality standards for the management of specific land areas or zones. Here again, the idea is to set minimum standards (or goals) and depend upon the people on-the-ground to determine the best ways of accomplishment.
Ski areas are not our major concern in this program, but they are significant visual impacts. We have all seen base areas and parking lots (especially in the summer) which were eyesores. Some of the big equipment coming into use such as the dual chair lift (pg. 35 of your Fall issue) may appear to some segments of the public as having more of the characteristics of a powerline than a recreational apparatus. We are pleased to see ski area managers keeping an eye on us (re Steve Bradley’s comments) and also experimenting with some of the visual concepts (re Chuck Lewis at Copper Mountain). Thus tempered by the critical eye of experience and the practical hand of one who’s done it, perhaps our “young, eager zealots” will have a part in instigating some degree of beneficial change in the industry and its public relations.
Edward H. Stone, II
Chief Landscape Architect
U.S. Forest Service
Regionals upheld
Sir:
I disagree with a couple of points in your article on the ski media (Fall SAM).
I do not think you should discount the value of regional ski publications. Far West News, for instance, is published 20 times a year and reaches the 33,000 members of the Far West Ski Association.
Most of our circulation is unduplicated by Ski and Skiing, and other surveys show that the Los Angeles area skier skis more days and spends more money in doing it than the average American skier. This is a market that surely should not be overlooked by ski advertisers.
In addition, there are five other regional ski publications. They are all newsprint tabloids. Thus, they have more editions and shorter deadlines. News and advertising are, therefore, more timely.
With regard to the U.S. Ski Association’s publication, it is the primary intention of USSA to find a vehicle with which to communicate with its members. Advertising would support this venture, and advertisers should want to reach these skiers, because, again, they are the “hard-core” skiers in the country.
As chairman of USSA’s publications committee for the past two years, I have been trying to convince USSA to create an inexpensive, year-round publication. I thought we had a good start three years ago with the USSA Ski News, but a more influential segment favors a slick magazine, and gave birth to Ski America – now American Skier.
Because of costs involved and other factors USSA will not have any publication this year, whereas continuation of USSA Ski News would by now have resulted in an effective national publication.
I hope other ski journalists saw your article as, aside from the above, I feel it was most informative.
Russ Tiffany, Editor,
Far West News
Reader Tiffany refers to the following that we said about the regional ski newspapers: “Mostly they live on high hopes, low income and heaps of enthusiasm. The ski world would be poorer without them, but even collectively they have no measurable influence on the total ski resort marketing picture.”
We will stick with what we think is a sympathetic and pragmatic evaluation.
As for the USSA publication, well, we have seen an awful lot of them since the old American Ski Annual was dropped in the early fifties. A different one roughly every third year, it seems. I guess we’ll just have to be shown.
—The Editor
