My Dressage Today is now Practical Horseman… Not happy.
gone are the days of D and CT. 8-(
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Yep, I sure miss D & CT. I won’t be renewing Dressage Today next time. USDF Connection gives me all the news I need.
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What a shame. I suspect that will kill a large percentage of DT subscribers’ renewals and ultimately hasten the scaling back of their dressage content even further.
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Yes, me too. My me too, moment, will likely not renew. I do not want, need the jumping, ct stuff.
Sad, will miss DT.
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Hmmm… I’m a long-time subscriber and haven’t gotten any notification… How did it come?
I’m a subscriber and haven’t had any direct info either, it was a Facebook post on the DT page that was indeed very confusing. I think it was saying DT and PH were merging and also only being published quarterly, but someone may correct me on that. Not a good way to treat subscribers.
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Here is the announcement from the Dressage Today Facebook page:
An important message from Dressage Today’s Jennifer Mellace:
"I’ve never been entirely comfortable with change. I personally don’t know many people who are. But I do know that with change comes exciting opportunities, and that’s what I want to share with you as we move forward into our next chapter.
For close to 25 years, Dressage Today arrived in your mailbox each month, bringing you hundreds of training articles coupled with stories that made you not just a subscriber but a valued part of the DT family. Today, our family, like any other, is growing and changing with the times. The biggest change is the merging of Dressage Today print with our sister publication, Practical Horseman. Some of you may be familiar with Prac, a monthly magazine that has brought how-to training, health and lifestyle articles to subscribers for more than 40 years. Now, this iconic training magazine will not only offer larger issues, but will also provide more in-depth dressage training features as well as some popular columns from DT, including “Clinic with Susanne von Dietze,” “Solutions” and “Tips from Trainers.” To do this, Practical Horseman will come to you quarterly, with spring, summer, fall and winter issues.
In addition, there are a ton of exciting things planned for DressageToday.com to enhance the digital offerings, including a more robust online presence with articles, weekly podcasts with trainers and health experts, increased social-media coverage from our travels and, something I’m especially looking forward to working on—specific how-to training videos for our video subscription site. In fact, we just wrapped up a 12-week video series with longtime contributor and FEI trainer Felicitas von Neumann-Cosel, who is just as excited as we are about bringing dressage to life for our subscribers.
‘This is such an incredibly exciting step,’ said Felicitas. ‘We’ve been restricted to just words and some pictures, but pictures are always a little bit staged because you don’t know what happened in the stride before or after. I know that touch and feel can be part of learning and visualization is part of learning, too. I am very visual and when I see a really good rider I get very inspired and that visualization helps me to improve my riding. I hope we can do a similar thing for the audience.’ We’ll be bringing the start of her series, ‘Harmony is Not a Coincidence,’ to video subscribers soon. If you aren’t familiar with our video site, be sure to check it out and sign up for a free month by going to DressageTodayOnline.com/30freedt.
We’re excited about the future and hope you will join us in our journey."
For subscription questions, please contact our customer service department at prhcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com or call (877) 717-8929 or (386) 447-6317.
Until next time,
Jennifer Mellace
Content Director, DressageToday.com
Sad to say it is the sign of the times —20 years ago I made a little extra money ($2-3K) a year writing freelance for the various equestrian based magazines --and I did photography too (think black and white developed in my own darkroom). That meshed nicely with my teaching job of photography and journalism. But I don’t think I’ve written or submitted anything since 2005 (12 years). The market literally dried up. Publications merged, the same articles were used in two or three magazines, and of course photography went digital. I don’t know if freelancers still exist --maybe they do in a new form called bloggers who earn money (somehow) through writing for the web. I still get two equestrian mags —EQUUS and Practical Horseman --but honestly haven’t learned anything new about horses in a while. Like everyone else, I read COTH!
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Not surprised, DT had hardly any pages left to it as it was. Combining the two doesn’t make for enough reading material for a monthly magazine? Bummer, I hate quarterly subscriptions, they seem to be the ones that never show up.
Don’t see DT going digital is going to help them. I don’t like digital anything (mostly because of crappy internet service and impossible download times), I still prefer a real magazine.
Maybe they should have asked why people weren’t buying their magazines.
The old D&CT had incredible articles about actual training by very noted trainers and riders, I learned a lot from those magazines.
Back to getting horse magazines from Europe, expensive but they have good magazines still available.
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I’ve had a DT subscription since Day One. But when I heard this (and not from DT directly), I cancelled my subscription, even though I had a year left on it. Not going to pay a year’s price for only 4 issues, and I don’t read digital magazines.
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Follow the money!
I found out when my subscription arrived. I had just renewed and thought for a horrified moment that I had accidentally renewed the wrong magazine. Nope!
Well, if you really want to stick with them, for a MERE $36/month, they are offering on-line content - seriously! I have to say, after the last few magazines, I’d already made up my mind they weren’t getting my $ anymore. I’m another who has been with them “since the beginning”, and watched the slow and steady decline.
I think it is kind of BS that they haven’t notified subscribers. But - then it is a big corporate magazine company, so what do we expect…
I think print media is suffering in general. I haven’t seen many really good articles in ANY of the horse magazines I get in the past year.
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Would that not negate the reason for the merger ? If that were the case it would have been better just to close down DT. I would think they are trying to provide economical dressage content and keep print subscribers. dressagetoday.com is going to be “enhanced”.
Unfortunately print publications are no longer an economically viable product.
Where does COTH the magazine fit, if print magazines are not viable any more?
Indeed it would negate the official reason for the merger, but there’s no way that a majority of people who paid for dressage specific content in magazine form are going to be happy enough with a general equestrian magazine and some online content that they’ll keep renewing. I’m cynical enough to suspect that they may be shuffling staff and trying to retain some subscription dollars in the short term for financial reasons, without any real faith that it will keep the dressage side of their publication alive in the longer term.
I remember doing the L program almost 30 years ago and Peter Lert was asked to float among the people the idea of a brand new magazine that was a break away from Practical Horseman–Dressage Today.
Now they are merging again. It obviously is not cost efficient now with everything online.
I really liked the Practical Horseman of the 70s. The format was different; the cover photo was from the feature article which was always the first one. There were fewer ads between the cover, index and that feature. At that time I did some jumping and eventing interested me back then (Poltroon!). Now the injuries and deaths in eventing put me off, and I no longer jump.
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I loved the Practical Horseman of the 70s and 80s, which was not a general interest magazine but very focused on sport horses, both news and training tips. That old PH was more like today’s COTH but a bit more training, and more on individual personalities than particular events. The new one doesn’t hold my interest, which is probably a combination of my changing needs as well as their changing format.
I couldn’t wait for my horse magazines to arrive when I was a kid, but my daughter never developed an interest in the magazines. I don’t know why that is exactly but my guess is it’s indicative of larger trends where every day online content takes the place of that once a month magazine lifeline, in addition to the fact that fewer kids have horses and when they do they are more likely to be in full service environments.
It’s sad to me that things are changing but I’m part of the problem.
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I received a letter from them and I am not even a subscriber. They did just recently solicit me for a $1 a month subscription. I have let most of my magazines expire and the only one I still get in print is EQUUS. That will not be renewed either.
