Whitelines
Encyclopedia
Whitelines is an English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 magazine covering snowboarding culture published by Factory Media.

History

Founded in 1995, Whitelines began publishing under Jim Peskett, owner of Permanent Publishing, with former British professional snowboarder Tudor ‘Chod’ Thomas as editor. Its sister skateboarding magazine, Sidewalk Surfer (now Sidewalk
Sidewalk magazine
Sidewalk is an English language magazine covering skateboarding culture published by Factory Media.-History:Originally known as Sidewalk Surfer at its inception it later changed its name to the current Sidewalk moniker...

) shared the same office in Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Abingdon or archaically Abingdon-on-Thames is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, England. It is the seat of the Vale of White Horse district. Previously the county town of Berkshire, Abingdon is one of several places that claim to be Britain's oldest continuously occupied town, with...

. They were later joined by The Surfer's Path
The Surfer's Path
The Surfer's Path is an international surfing magazine which is published every two months. Founded in 1997, the magazine is a bit of an anomaly in the surf-publishing world. Based in the United Kingdom, the Path is low-key and philosophical. From the start, its Caribbean-born editor, Alex...

 and Dig BMX
Dig BMX
Dig BMX is a bi-monthly BMX lifestyle magazine currently based in both the UK and U.S. Started in 1993 by editor/designer Will Smyth, Dig BMX's beginnings were originally based in an attic/office in the Holy Land area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It has since moved to Glasgow, Scotland, while also...

.

The magazine’s name, which plays on freeride snowboarding
Snowboarding
Snowboarding is a sport that involves descending a slope that is covered with snow on a snowboard attached to a rider's feet using a special boot set onto mounted binding. The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, sledding, surfing and skiing. It was developed in the U.S.A...

 and drugs culture, was originally spelt out as two words (White Lines). Over the years - for the sake of a simpler logo and the website URL - it has merged to become Whitelines.

At the time of its launch, the only other British snowboard magazine on the shelves was Snowboard UK. Initially something of a fanzine, Whitelines targeted a core readership, differentiating itself from the competition through its forthright opinions and an irreverent sense of humour. Early articles included ‘Freak Speak’ (in which the editor interviewed Oxford’s local tramps), a tour of the UK’s best rollercoasters and an in depth tutorial on ‘How to drive like The Sweeney
The Sweeney
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...

’. Tudor ‘Chod’ Thomas now admits that these were partly included for lack of actual snowboarding photos.

The first issue of Whitelines was published in October 1995 and featured Burton-sponsored British snowboarder Chris Moran on the cover. Moran later went on to become one of the magazine’s editors, alongside Matt Barr, before the two of them left to found the ACM writing group, which still contributes regular articles to the magazine.

The current editor, Ed Blomfield, joined in 2005, and is assisted by Tristan Kennedy. Chod, who by this time focused solely on graphic design, left the magazine in 2007. Other members of the Whitelines editorial team have included the BBC’s Ski Sunday
Ski Sunday
Ski Sunday is the BBC Sports weekly magazine-style television show covering winter sports, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sundays in a late afternoon or an early evening time-slot...

 presenter Ed Leigh
Ed Leigh
-Broadcasting career:Leigh presents the BBC2 show Ski Sunday during the winter and Red Bull X-Fighters World Series for Dave alongside Rob Warner in the summer....

 and photographer James McPhail. Whitelines is also credited with kick-starting the photographic career of Nick Hamilton, who worked as a staffer at Permanent Publishing alongside skate lensman Wig Worland before leaving Whitelines to become Photo Editor at Transworld Snowboarding
Transworld Snowboarding
TransWorld SNOWboarding is an American magazine focused on the snowboarding culture. It is published 10 times a year by Bonnier Corporation and features the sport, culture and lifestyle of modern snowboarding.-History:...

.

Over the years Whitelines has developed from its early fanzine style to a respected snowboard journal, and regularly features the work of some of the best international snowboard photographers, including Jeff Curtes, Blotto, Andy Wright and Scott Serfas. Regular columnists have included pro snowboarders Devun Walsh and David Benedek
David Benedek
David Benedek is a professional snowboarder, graphic designer and film maker. He is the co-founder of former US-based production company Robot Food as well as founder of Germany based Blank Paper Studio. David is most notable for his creative approach to Snowboarding as well as for pushing...

. In 2005, Benedek chose a cover-mounted DVD on Whitelines as the means to distribute his acclaimed film, ‘91 Words for Snow’, in the UK.

Whitelines has helped spawn the careers of many of Britain’s professional snowboarders, such as Danny Wheeler, Tyler Chorlton, Jenny Jones, Dan Wakeham, Scott McMorris, Dom Harington, Ben Kilner and Jamie Nicholls. It has also taken riders to many unusual snowboarding destinations, including Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

, the Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

, and Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

.

In 2007, the magazine joined Factory Media as part of the merger of three leading specialist sports publishers: Action Sports Media (ASM), Permanent Publishing and 4130 Publishing. It is now based in Farringdon
Farringdon
Farringdon is a historic area of the City of London, represented today by the Wards of Farringdon Within and Farringdon Without. Farringdon is also used informally to refer to the area around Farringdon Station in the London Borough of Islington, some distance north of the historic locality.-City...

, London.

Whitelines is currently the only local snowboard magazine on UK newsstands, enjoying the lion’s share of the print market.

Awards

In 2007 Ed Blomfield was named New Editor of the Year at the PTC New Journalist Awards.

In 2010 Whitelines won ‘Best Cover’ in the sports category of the Maggies Awards. The winning cover, from issue 82, was shot in Iceland and featured British snowboarder Colum Mytton.

New Media

Whitelines Magazine’s website, whitelines.com, is a growing as a part of the Whitelines brand and focuses on snowboarding news, videos and competitions. Whitelines.com is part of the Mpora network, which is shared between all of the Factory Media titles.. Whitelines also sends out a popular and much imitated newsletter, the Friday Fix, to some 25,000 subscribers. The weekly email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

includes snowboarding news, video links and a desktop wallpaper.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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