Tuesdays with Rogge: The Man Behind NS

There's all different types of people working in winter sports but as IF3 co-founder, JF DuRocher, once said, "There is only one, Doug Bishop." He's absolutely right. Doug's a trend setter, carrier, and sometimes, the lone torch holder. A few years back, I recall skiing with Doug and quickly commenting he was skiing without poles. "Hey man, I gotta try this before I knock it." Part of the fun of this space is the abiltiy and freedom to interview interesting folks with different outlooks and varying levels of passion towards skiing. Doug embodies all of the passion of any and everyone I've ever interviewed.  Always the optomist, in his almost 10 years with Newschoolers, he's seen athletes, producers, and companies come and go while he moved NS from a loft apartment-based website to a legitmate force and threat to snow-related print publishers across the globe. Like I said before, there's all different types of people. Here's one that doesn't fit any mold but his own. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Doug Bishop. 

How did you get involved with Newschoolers?
It was pretty simple. I met Chris and Harvey, actually independently and I then introduced the two of them together, by just being a guy on Newschoolers looking for other skiers. Then when Harvey peaced out from Newschoolers to take a job at Freeskier, Chris asked if I thought this would be a fun thing to do and I said, “Sure, why the hell not!” I was sort of looking for something different to do with my life. I was building parks at the time and I sort of wanted to get into working my brain a little bit more than my body. I was always stoked on Newschoolers and always thought it would be a really rad job to do. That was sort of that, moved up to Montreal to get it going, and haven’t really looked back.

You’re the only one left of the original three. How’s it feel to be at the helm?
(laughs) How’s it feel to be at the helm? (laughs) I don’t know. I definitely like it and I’m happy to continue pushing the site in the direction I think it should be going and the direction the users think it should be going. I mean, the funny thing about Newschoolers is that no one person can ever really fully guide it, ya know? You can’t ever command it to go in a certain direction. All you can really ever do is listen to what it wants. It’s like a beast that’s an amalgamation of all the people who visit it. It’s nice to take that feedback and try to guide it in the direction that everybody wants it to go. It’s certainly been a wild ride but it’s going well...

I like that. You’re going with the rock and roll, I just came off a crazy reunion tour, “Oh yeah, its been a wild ride…” (laughs)
(laughs) It has been a wild ride, man! Getting started, like when I was doing ad sales, I’m picking up the phone and saying, “Hiii! Doug Bishop, Newschoolers.com. Have you ever heard of the site?” and they’re like, “No” and I’d be like, “Do you advertise online?” and they’re again be like, “No.” I’d be like, “Oh ok…well, there we go.” (laughs) I swear, that’s what it was like starting it. We weren’t just trying to sell ads on an ad supported business, we were trying to create online advertising budgets in 95% of the companies we were talking to.

Are you starting to see the money make its way from print to online or is that still a ways away?
I think there’s a really long way to go. Obviously I don’t know exactly how much money goes into print but I do know there’s a lot more of it that goes into print than is making its way into the web. I mean, it’s the same with the New York Times. It’s the same with regular media. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 10% of less of the advertising dollars that are available goes into the web. It’s tough be a web only property because you don’t have that sweeping amount of dollars coming in. We’re just three guys battling these huge staffs of magazines. Now, granted we don’t have the same baseline costs of printing a magazine and sending it out, which allows us to scale a lot harder but there certainly isn’t the proportional dollars coming in our door.
    You know, I’m all for books and printing and I think that there’s some intrinsic value to  the quality of what you get out of that stuff but on the same side, we’re all sitting around talking about going green. I don’t understand how someone can say, “Stop driving your S.U.V. but buy this multi colored paper filled ink thing every month and then throw it out. I guess I’m a little interested in how the world is planning to go green while still using so much paper all the time.

Ok, so I have you on the record stating you do not hate books and in fact, you enjoy reading?
Oh yeah! I like reading and I think reading is good. I think there’s a real place in this world for printed material. I guess its just one of those things that’s going to go through a bit of an upheaval because the internet has changed a lot of it. Reading the newspaper everyday, for instance. It’s good but there’s a lot of that information available online and it’ll allow you to go into much more depth, it’ll allow you to compare sources, it’ll allow you to take that information to the next level and you don’t have to be throwing out a newspaper every single day.

Talk about the acquisition of Newschoolers. How did the purchase of Newschoolers happen and who facilitated that deal?
Ya know, we were just basically approached. We weren’t thinking of selling at all. Sportnet, which was a division of Wasserman Media Group at the time, gave us a call on a Thursday and was like, “Hey, we’re interested in purchasing your site. We’d like you guys to get on a plane and meet us out here in L.A. on Monday.” (laughs) We were like, “Ugh…alright.” It was kind of surprising but you know, once we got out there… I’ll be honest with you, I think originally we just intended to take the free trip to L.A. and see what it was like to have somebody ask to buy the business… but as we met with these guys and we talked about how it would happen and how it would function… the biggest thing we realized was that this was an opportunity for us to take things to the next level. There may be some growth issues and some difficulties but bottom line, we were a couple of young guys running this half-ass business out of the back of our apartment and this was our chance to really increase the resources and build into something that was a lot more than just a fun project.
    After we looked at everything, I think we all decided that it was kind of time for Newschoolers to take that next step and get up to that next level and it was something we certainly wouldn’t have been able to accomplish on our own.

What’s been the biggest surprise since being acquired?
I’m surprised at how passionate and loyal the users are because there has been a lot of changes and there are a lot of different things that we’ve done. We always try to make sure that we’re taking feedback and listening to people bitch about it. Really, at the end of the day, when we do something that crosses the line or something that the users don’t like, what I really like is we get that the community is willing to stick together. People aren’t looking to head off and go somewhere else. As a community, we’re looking to build this thing into something and not just Newschoolers. NS has gotten to the point where it represents more than just the website; its sort of representing all the people out there that are doing this part of the sport. We’re banding together and saying, through thick and thin, “Alright, let’s build this mother fucker.”  I’ve really, really been constantly impressed by how passionate people are about the site.

What do you say to the person that says, “Newschoolers is just a bunch of shit talking kids on a forum”?
The first thing is, Newschoolers.com is not any different from any other web forum. That’s just the internet. The internet has anonymity and when given anonymity, people talk shit. If you’re ever looking for something fun, go to 4chan.org. and you can see what REAL shit talking is about. Parental Advisory recommended.
    The other thing is the quantity of information. People say its just a bunch of shit talkers…well, there’s shit talkers, yeah but if you can kind of read between it there is an amazing quanitity of quality information in there. The fact is, it’s real. When people say, “Oh Newschoolers causes shit talking,” well…No. I mean, if you were huddling around a group of kids reading Freeskier in the lodge, they’d be talking shit. I can remember watching people in a room watching a Poor Boyz movie and they’d be like, “That skier sucks. I hate that guy. He has whack style.” The only thing that changed is Newschoolers gave those people an opportunity to say it to the public and people get shocked by that but lets face it, when its out in the public, now you can talk about it. You can address that problem. You can now say, “Well, no, his style isn’t whack…it’s this or he skis like this for this reason or no, he’s a backcountry skier,” or in the case of product, a company can come in now and communicate with their consumers and fix it. It’s no longer a dirty little secret where you have a few behemoth media sources talking down to the rest of the world. All of a sudden, the end customer has a chance to get their opinion heard too.

What’s your biggest concern going forward with Newschoolers?
What’s my biggest concern…shhhhh….you’re asking some fuckin’ bangers here Rogge! (laughs) I have no fucking concerns…Newschoolers is amazing! (laughs) No, no, in actual honesty, I’m concerned that people view the site wrong but again, going back to that community thing, I really think we can work with that. I appreciate it when someone walks up to me and says, “I HATE Newschoolers because of this…” and then it’s like, “Ok, lets go fix that problem.” And we can. We can all work together to fix that problem. I sometimes wonder if that will scale as it gets bigger, but it’s the internet and you can come up with a solution for pretty much anything. I mean, if it gets too mainstream, Newschoolers already has some pretty cool regional parts to it and cool private forums. There’s ways to address those problems.

What’s changed since you turned 30 this past March?
I grew up.

What do you know now that you didn’t know back in the day?
Ya know, the bottom line is that growing up isn’t that bad. Your tastes change. Your views on life are different. I mean, I can’t ski like I used to. I certainly couldn’t compete anymore but that doesn’t matter to me as much anymore. For me, I used to be so focused on going out and skiing and training and trying to be a good skier and I feel like at sometimes I lost the passion that got me into it. I like going out even with my nonskier friends and just introducing them to the mountain, going out, having a couple drinks, a nice lunch, and take a few runs for fun. I mean, I also still definitely like to go out and rip with my buddies but I think it’s alright to go out and enjoy a little slice of everything. You don’t need to confine yourself to one little world.

Let’s wrap this up with a few word associations:

Skiing heroes: JF Cusson
Freeskier Magazine: Matt Harvey
(laughs) that’s funny because my next word association was Matt Harvey.

Matt Harvey is the fucking man!

Jeff Schmuck: (laughs) Jeff (pause) Schmuck… Schmuck rules!
The East Coast: my home
The East Coast for skiing: passionate
The Hot Girl thread on Newschoolers: Best-Thread-EVER! (laughs)