Most of you will find this pretty dull, but for one time only here is the ‘lo down’. 4130 Publishing was a small family business that was constantly fighting against the big fish of the publishing world, you know the score…David vs. Goliath, etc. So anyway, 4130 decided to join forces with two other action sports publishers to create a new publishing group, and that is called Factory Media. What this means is that we now have the resources to push Dirt into a new era. It means that we can build a strong and dedicated editorial team that will all be working together to produce what will hopefully become a great bike magazine. We are not on a power trip here, we just want it to work, mainly for you lot out there, our loyal readers. Readers who have been asking us for years “when are you going to go monthly? I can’t wait two months.”

So yeah, from now on Dirt magazine will be monthly. Of course we have concerns, our main one being that we don’t want to lose the feel and high standards of the original magazine, we don’t want to dilute it or pad–out the content, we don’t want mediocre photography, design or editorial, and we don’t really want to become too mainstream (if you know what I mean)…what we want is for it to be spot on, every time. We want to make the magazine inspirational, but most of all to reflect bikes on the dirt in the twenty first century. Sure there will be some changes, but that is all good.
So that’s it, that’s the story. I haven’t got the new chair or the answer phone yet, but they are on the way! – Mike Rose.