Updates for Wrestling Observer Newsletter print & online subscribers

Sometimes in life, you have decisions that should be easy when you take out emotions. But emotions are a huge part of life which is what makes them so difficult.

Saying that, a decision that we have made should be a benefit for everyone who subscribes to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Yet when you do something a certain way for so long and it’s been so successful historically, it is hard to make changes.

That decision: the mailed version of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter will be discontinued with the 12/11 issue. 

The WON will continue as an online publication and, for the vast majority of subscribers, there will be no real changes other than some new positive ways in which information will be put on the website.

The decision basically came down to this: with all the costs of printing, producing, people needing to be hired to handle the mailing and the lists, I would probably need to charge $5 per issue to make it worth it. I do believe many of the print subscribers would be fine with that just as there are still people who spend $50 on WWE PPVs when you can get them streaming for so much less.

What print subscribers need to know

For those of you who are print subscribers, your time left will be transferred over automatically to an online subscription for the time remaining. In the case of overseas subscribers, that will be for a longer time based on the higher price you have paid. Essentially, you will be getting more for the same price, getting the Observers a week or so earlier than you had been, plus access to all the archives of issues dating back to 1991 and all podcasts since the start of the site. 

For those who subscribed because they liked the issues being printed and would read it that way rather than on a computer screen, the new format, which will be available for the first time for all website subscribers, will be formatted very similarly to the print edition. You will also be able to print them out from the website.

Another change is that many Observer stories will be put up exclusively for all subscribers during the week rather than all on Friday. The Friday WON will have those stories and in many cases, what I’d call the official “record” would still be released on Fridays with updates through press time. Many of the key stories are pretty much completed earlier in the week, but many would still be updated before going into the final version of the WON released on Friday mornings.

For those who for whatever reason don’t want the change to an online subscription, you will get the remainder of your subscription money refunded. Obviously, I’m hoping that number is small. I just want the print subscribers to know how much I appreciate your support for so long and it is that loyalty that kept me from making the change that, from a business standpoint, should have been made some time ago.

For all print subscribers, please contact Tony Leder who will implement your new online subscription or cancel if that is what you prefer.

Everyone transferring over is getting far more for their money, you can still print the issues out, and they will look basically identical. Again, for the print subscribers that this affects the most, thank you for, what in most cases, is for decades of support and hopefully for many more years to come.

Note: There will be no WON on the week of 12/15 (dated 12/18) due to a vacation I am taking that week. Going forward, I would expect issues 51 weeks a year as I would like to take one vacation annually.

How we got here

The print Observer has been something I have been doing for 41 years. I joined forces with Bryan Alvarez in 2008, a decision in hindsight that I wish I made years earlier. A previous attempt at taking the Observer online was disastrous with constant lies about subscriber numbers and then Pro Sports Exchange, the group we worked with, started having financial issues before closing down. That cost me a very significant amount of money.

This partnership with Bryan has been nothing but positive, leading to a new wave of popularity and readership levels. In time, as would be expected, the vast majority of the existing readership transferred over to online subscriptions because they would get the issues earlier, the news podcasts that I do weekly, as well as the rest of the podcasts we offer. That has opened up the ability to have gatherings and for me to personally meet so many of you over the years, which has been so rewarding. 

Still, the existing print subscribers are people who I have felt so much loyalty to by continuing with the print edition — even when it no longer made sense economically due to so many postage and print price increases. Whenever I meet a print subscriber, invariably they tell me they have been getting it this way for 20 or 30 years, and in some cases longer than that.

I started the print WON 41 years ago and it has been my full-time job, along with some other gigs, since making the key decision nearly 37 years ago of leaving my childhood dream of being a newspaper sportswriter and going on this journey. 

At the time of the decision, both jobs were making me very little money. Everyone, from my parents on down, were vehemently against the decision but I was starting to make more money from the newsletter than as a sportswriter at the time in a small market. While my work and career trajectory in sportswriting did look good, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter was getting praise in places that reviewed newsletters, being called one of the best in the country among all genres at the time.

The world changes in ways nobody could imagine. Even at the time, I thought I was giving up what would be a steady job that I greatly enjoyed for something that had no proven future. Over the next few years, largely thanks to the late Ed Garea, and then Los Angeles Times sports editor John Cherwa and NBC sports head Dick Ebersol (the irony of this is that Ebersol at the time was close friends and a business partner in Saturday Night’s Main Event with Vince McMahon), I ended up being hired by the greatest sportswriter of this generation, Frank Deford, to do a column in the short-lived National Sports Daily.

Deford was not a fan of pro wrestling, although he did have a great fondness for roller derby and even wrote a book about it which was coincidentally my favorite sports book as a child. Deford felt that wrestling was very popular and while not quite sports, it deserved coverage and when asking around, he was told by those two, who were both subscribers, that I was the person to hire. Cherwa, who as coincidence would have it was friends with Mike Tenay, subscribed under his real name, and Ebersol, like so many sports execs of the time who secretly were very interested in wrestling, would get it using the name of people working underneath them.

The exposure and prestige of being part of the all-star team of sportswriters saw the WON have tremendous growth and, in hindsight, the decision was the right one. Now, even more so. 

With the decline and deaths of newspapers around the country and heavy constriction of jobs, I easily could have been 45 years old and my childhood dream would have been over. 

Thank you

I have so much appreciation and loyalty to older readers and I hope that at gatherings when you have met me and told me about being print subscribers for 20 or 30 years that I have been able to convey how much I appreciate your support. 

I also know that even though I consider these changes win-win for every reader, both print and online, that there will be some people who have been with us for so long that will not be after the change. I just want to thank you and hope that all these years that this has been a rewarding part of your life.