To all our Wilderness family,

I hope you are all keeping safe and healthy in your bubbles during the nationwide lockdown. 

Like everyone else in New Zealand trying to adjust to the reality of working from home – for those of us fortunate enough to be able to do so – the Wilderness team has kept in contact with one another, having video meetings and scrambling to think how best we can bring the outdoors into our readers’ indoor spaces. 

Since 1991, our mission has been to help you ‘see more, do more, live more’. This has been done with long-form features, trips and gear reviews, by introducing you to the interesting and inspiring people who work, play and live in the outdoors and by chronicling our unique Kiwi outdoor culture.

That hasn’t changed just because we’re in lockdown. We have published several Covid-19-related stories online and while ours is a small contribution to the overall Covid-19 coverage being published in New Zealand, it is the kind of content you won’t find elsewhere because we’ve tailored it to you and how the pandemic has affected outdoor users. (If you haven’t seen our content already, you can find it here. More will be added next week.)

The reason I am writing today is to inform you of some recent developments which affect the publication schedule for Wilderness.

You may have heard the news that Bauer Media has ceased publication of all its NZ magazines and you may be wondering about the viability of Wilderness. It’s important to note that Bauer has been looking for a buyer for its magazines for some time and it appears that this has been factored into the decision to shut its titles. Wilderness is in a different position to Bauer and although we are facing the most challenging times in terms of advertising and retail revenue, the magazine has a strong subscriber base which will help to see it through the current situation.

The big decision that does impact Wilderness is the government’s announcement that magazines and their printers are not considered an essential service. This means we cannot publish our May issue as planned on April 14. 

We want you to know though, that we are committed to ensuring every subscriber receives the issues they have paid for. Therefore – provided we are allowed to – we will now be sending the May issue to the printer late in April. This means print subscribers will receive their copy around 10 days later than normal. However, if we find we are prevented from publishing at all at this time, perhaps due to the continuance of the lockdown, we will need to consider combining the May and June magazines into one May-June issue. We will make a decision on this in the next few weeks and let you know what this means for your subscription and issues owed.

If you have any questions about your subscription or would like to consider putting it on hold temporarily, please get in touch with my colleague Andrea at: subscribe@lifestylepublishing.co.nz. Or, of course, you can contact me and talk things through – see my contact details below.

I would also like to take this moment to thank you for your continued support of Wilderness – it’s been published now for nearly 29 years. But, in light of recent developments, it is fair to say we need your support now more than ever if we are to continue helping future generations – your kids, and grandkids even –  ‘see more, do more, live more’ over the next three decades.

If you value what Wilderness is, the light it brings into your home each month, the inspiration it provides for future outdoor adventures, then I ask that you maintain your subscription, renew early (be sure to log in before ordering), or share the love by buying a gift subscription for someone else. 

Please keep in touch. I’d love to hear how you are going and what you’re doing to pass the time in lockdown.  

And, don’t forget, when normality returns, Wilderness will be there helping you enjoy the best outdoors in the world.

Take care

Alistair Hall
Editor
alistair@lifestylepublishing.co.nz