John Severson originally created
The Surfer as a collection of prints of his still surfing photography used to promote live screenings of his surfing movies. He gave them out as flyers at the shows, then after heavy requests for more decided to sell them. His first quarterly issues had a cover price of 75 cents and at the time it was the single most expensive magazine in the country. Severson also wanted to counter the popular depiction of the sport and surf culture as seen in the 1959 film
Gidget. In his 2014 book
John Severson Surf, he wrote "surfers hated those Hollywood surf films, and I could see that
Surfer could create a truer image of the sport." Surfer Magazine became the de facto 'Bible' of the sport, and for decades was the number one source of inspiration and surf culture news in the world, The magazine was revered not just in the US, but in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and all of Latin America & the Pacific. Severson established a tradition of including fiction, and from the very beginning, Surfer Magazine published short stories as a regular feature. Severson sold
Surfer, the date reported variously as "in 1970;" Drew Kampion was editor of the magazine from 1968 to 1972. At
Surfer, Warshaw mentored numerous journalists, giving them a place on the editorial staff and connecting independent authors with editors and surfing personalities. In 2019, when asked about 2019 purchase of
Surfer by
American Media (AMI), widely known for its
National Enquirer publication, Warshaw said, "
Surfer, best-case scenario, is in for a very rough year or two, then American Media puts it up for sale and it gets bought as a vanity project, the way
Jeff Bezos bought the
Washington Post.
Surfer will at that point be reborn in whatever form the rich benefactor dictates." Editor Todd Prodanovich and the other four full-time staffers were furloughed October 2, 2020 and publication was halted. In 2022, The Arena Group acquired the
Surfer digital brand. ==References==