As a lot of other writers have either learned or are figuring out, there comes a point where writing without compensation becomes a very difficult task to perform. If you’re writing without payment, it likely means that said writer has a day job, so eventually the task of fulfilling both the day job and writing quality stories becomes a very tiring affair. And while the reasons Samuels gave for ending PostSurf are vague to say the least, there’s no question that putting in a lot of effort without compensation played a part.
The most blatant evidence of this was the gradual recession of fresh content. Until the past couple of months, Samuels would put in an extraordinary amount of effort to make sure that there were always daily posts. For example, during a surf trip to Australia, Samuels had a new story published every day of his trip. For those of you who travel, it isn’t hard to understand how difficult of a task that could be. Yet here was Samuels, the former author of Surfline’s controversial Power Rankings (and rumor has it Surfline was paying him four-figures for each edition of the Power Rankings) making sure to not post filler material on his site, but rather provide the usual dose of quality negativity that seemed to brighten so many surfer’s days.
In the last couple of months however, readers of Samuels noticed fresh, daily stories absent from the pages of Postsurf. Samuels was missing a day of content here or there, sometimes not posting new material for days at a time. And he was also re-posting stories from other blog sites, with the content interesting but not anywhere near the quality of work that Samuels himself provides.
So in the end, Sean Collin’s Surfline won the battle. I emphasize battle and not war because it remains to be seen whether Samuels is in fact finished with Postsurf, or if this is simply a ruse (I’m waiting to hear back from Samuels to see if he would be interested in conducting a follow-up interview to discuss the departure from Postsurf). It also remains to be seen if Samuels will stop writing about surf altogether. So yes, today is a sad day. Arguably the best website for surf coverage, Postsurf.com, is evidently finished. Surfing needs honest reporting from writers like Lewis Samuels. Here’s to hoping that Samuels doesn’t follow Ben Marcus’ path to obscurity.
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