Addressing the Hiatus

A look inside Issue No. 2 of SportUp's Between The Lines magazine

A lot has changed since 2010. It's fair to say that the Internet is a different place—the landscape of social media 'disrupted' blogging, just as blogging had disrupted publishing. The sport of rowing has grown online, too.

Strange but true: RowingRelated and Instagram got started within days of each other, in October 2010. Since then, I think it's fair to say we've had similar levels of success. (Ha.) But seriously, Instagram, and other social networks, have changed the way we consume media. (You don't need to look any further than analysis of the U.S. presidential election to find evidence of that.) It has also changed the way that publishers, writers, and artists communicate with their audiences. Which brings me to my main point: This isn't goodbye, and we never left.

I referenced Instagram earlier—the network's meteoric rise to prominence carried a lot of people with it. In the rowing world, we were fortunate enough to have been among the early adopters, and saw our audience grow exponentially throughout last year and most of 2016. As a result, we've been able to share—directly with our audience—some of the best photography, videos, and banter in the rowing world. So, our efforts shifted slightly—the social networks themselves have become more of a focus, the audience more of a driving, participatory force. And, (since RR has always been a labor of love and not dependent on ad impressions for its very existence) that's great.

However, that time poured into social networks is time taken away from publishing articles. It's not all bad—the success of RR has also meant that I've had less time to publish articles for free, with more paying gigs taking precedence. Also, it doesn't mean I've slowed down in writing about rowing—in my work for SportUp, I've relied on the talent and energy of the rowing community many times in building content for the company, writing features on Row New York (an article that has since been included in our twice-yearly print magazine—see photo above), and Community Rowing, Inc. And I've continued to contribute to ROWING Magazine, here in the U.S., each month.

That's probably a lot more than you cared to know about me. But it's all by way of explanation for the obvious hiatus here at RR. There's no shortage of things to cover—rowing is the font of endless inspiration. We've got more than a few ideas up our sleeves, and we'll continue to post those as we are able.

In the meantime, the RR archive will be right here—six years of content, coaching, and hand-picked videos for your enjoyment, and maybe even edification. If there's something specific you'd like us to look into, please get in touch by posting a comment here, emailing us via the About page, or reach out to us via social media. And for daily updates from around the world, keep tabs on our TwitterInstagram, and Facebook accounts—we can't thank you enough for sharing your photos and videos with us, and we're looking forward to more as another spring season edges toward the horizon, just on the other side of about a million meters on the erg.

Cheers to that.

-Bryan

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