Back In Local Hands

JHSM co-founder reflects on the magazine’s past and hopeful future

WORDS: JESSE BROWN

PHOTO: KASHA GLOWACKA

We knew nothing about publishing, and even less about each other."

Almost 15 years ago Jackson prosnowboarder Lance Pitman and I decided to launch the first issue of the magazine you’re reading. It was a curious endeavor for Lance and I—we knew nothing about publishing, and even less about each other. We grew up on different sides of the country, came from different backgrounds. But we shared one overarching desire: to tell the stories of Jackson Hole’s snowboarding community.

I remember working on our first media kit in the back of Lance’s Illuminati snowboard shop. It would introduce our idea to the world, allow us to gauge the community’s appetite. When the media kit, filled with fancy pie charts and graphs, arrived from the printer, we were proud of what we saw. Sometimes I look at it to remind me of those early days.

Although we didn’t know the term for it then, we were also proud that the magazine was rooted in localism. It was born out of the desire to place local faces behind a publication that is for a community, by a community. We were accountable—many of our advertisers, writers, photographers and readers were also our friends and neighbors. We were building something different without even knowing it. Making money off the magazine, while something we considered, was hardly the main thing we thought about.

Because we were not obsessed with profit margins, we sowed a certain legacy: We kept our content a 2:1 ratio of stories to ads, we created a beautiful ad-free photo gallery, and we gave our magazines away for free with none left at the end of the year.

When it was time for me to leave Jackson, I was faced with a tough decision. I didn’t want to see the magazine die and thought

about running it from the East Coast, but my heart wasn’t in it. However, my search to find a snowboarder to buy the magazine, someone to shepherd it on the path we had carved, was dismal. When Planet Jackson Hole’s former publishers, Mary and Judd Grossman, approached me about buying it, it seemed the best option to keep it alive. After that sale, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I felt good knowing editor Robyn Vincent, and a few years later art director Olaus Linn were holding things down. They stayed when the magazine switched ownership yet again, from the Grossmans to Copperfield Publishing.

A couple months ago, Robyn told me the magazine was up for sale for a third time and that Olaus was considering purchasing it. I was psyched to hear that. After all, he epitomizes the word local. His family settled in Jackson more than a century ago. That he is an artist and a snowboarder means he is uniquely equipped to carry the torch.

As for me, I’m still trying to create something I can feel as passionately about as Jackson Hole Snowboarder Magazine. What I do know is that I care about telling people’s stories and using my camera to do that. Now I’m working collectively with artists in my area to launch a communitysupported storytelling network. Think Netflix, but for a local community in which the artists and the community own the platform and keep the money flowing locally.

As I work on that venture, I’m constantly amazed how many similarities there are to what we were doing with the magazine and how much that experience laid a foundation for me to build upon. I’m forever grateful to the Jackson community and all the amazing friends that I made there. That’s really what the magazine was about for me and I hope what it will always be about: celebrating friends and having gratitude for Jackson’s anomalous snow community.

JB

Jesse Brown is a photographer and entrepreneur currently based in Hudson Valley, New York.

@digi_ranch