TransWorld SNOWboarding still No. 1

After some 24 years in circulation, TransWorld SNOWboarding still holds the No. 1 title worldwide when it comes to snowboarding magazines. "We distance ourselves out front year after year by remaining true to our snowboarding roots and by delivering the very best snowboarding photos of the best snowboarders in the world," says Annie Fast, Editor-in-Chief.

Top-notch photos are an important distinguishing feature of the magazine, says Fast. "Unlike a lot of magazines, we don't rely on stock photography at all," she says. "We use exclusive contributing and staff photographers to get shots for all our features and columns. Our readers expect images of the most progressive, professional snowboarding, and it doesn't come easy."

Fast points to the recent success of a new editorial event called the Team Shoot Out, which ran for the first time in 2009. Basically a photo and video competition between four snowboard teams over one week, the result was a true cross-platform feature, says Fast: 30 pages of print, iTunes distribution, over a million page views on twsnow.com, and a 60-minute show on MTV2.

Fast and Nick Hamilton, director of photo and video will naturally be covering the Olympics. "Our main focus in Vancouver is the halfpipe events-in order to distinguish our Olympic coverage from just any old contest coverage, we created infographics showing riders' runs in the pipe (check out infographic for snowboarder Shaun White here), which has gotten great feedback," says Fast. "We'll continue with those in our Olympic coverage and focus on getting behind the scenes with the riders and getting the best photos. That's what we do."