SNEWS Ownership Changes Hands, But Not Direction

Current SNEWS® co-publishers and editors Michael Hodgson and Therese Iknoian have purchased SNEWS® Inc. from former owners and SNEWS® founders Bob and Eileen Woodward, effective Jan.1, 2002. Terms of the sale were not disclosed (We’ve always wanted to say that).

“I have never been able to visualize myself trolling the trade show aisles when I’m 75, asking through clacking false teeth, ‘Have you got anything truly new and different?'” said Bob Woodward. “And so, after 18 years, I’m selling my interest in SNEWS® to the Michael Hodgson/Therese Iknoian team. I will remain part of the team as a reporter. They actually have to keep me on — I know where all the bodies are buried.” Click here to read more from Woody on SNEWS and the sale.

For Hodgson, becoming a co-owner of SNEWS® is a dream come true: “Even when working as an editor with Outdoor Retailer, long before joining the SNEWS® team, I admired SNEWS®’ independence and its ability and freedom to tell the stories that needed to be told, complete with factual insight sprinkled with just enough irreverence to be a wonderfully entertaining, yet critically informative, read,” Hodgson said.

Iknoian is returning to her roots as a hard news daily journalist (she was a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News for several year where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning news coverage): “It’s been thrilling to be back in the journalism trenches, covering news and events as they happen. This time, though, it’s in industries that I know and love — fitness and outdoor — rather than in city politics and on crime beats.”

Under Hodgson’s and Iknoian’s leadership during the last year, SNEWS® headed onto the Web, for the first time giving the outdoor and fitness community access to daily cutting-edge news. Broader international news was added to the domestic reach, as well as regular product reviews, trends analyses, trade surveys, and special features, all flavored with a good a helping of attitude and as much SNEWS® humor as possible.

Subscriptions have gone from numbering fewer than 400 to well over 1100 — and those numbers grow daily. And SNEWS® has been named the official source for North American outdoor and fitness news for ispo, the European sports trade fair in Germany. Of course, the fact that Iknoian is fluent in German after attending college there doesn’t hurt the ispo connection any. Hodgson loves to counter that he too is multilingual — speaking both British and American due to his British parents — we’re just not sure how to apply this talent to expanding the international coverage.

SNEWS® Inc. owns all publishing rights to SNEWS®, the leading independent voice for the outdoor and fitness trades, as well as the trademark rights to GearTrends®, and operating rights to www.geartrends.com, a leading new product information site for manufacturers in the outdoor, fitness, paddle sport, and snow sport markets.