Podcast #200: The Story of Stu

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Who

Stuart Winchester, Founder, Editor & Host of The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast

Recorded on

March 4, 2025

Editor’s note

1) The headline was not my idea; 2) Erik said he would join me as the guest for episode 199 if he could interview me for episode 200; 3) I was like “sure Brah”; 4) since he did the interview, I asked Erik to write the “Why I interviewed him” section; 5) this episode is now available to stream on Disney+; 6) but no really you can watch it on YouTube (please subscribe); 7) if you don’t care about this episode that’s OK because there are 199 other ones that are actually about snosportskiing; 8) and I have a whole bunch more recorded that I’ll drop right after this one; 9) except that one that I terminally screwed up; 10) “which one?” you ask. Well I’ll tell that humiliating story when I’m ready.

Why I interviewed him, by Erik Mogensen

I met Stuart when he was skiing at Copper Mountain with his family. At lunch that day I made a deal. I would agree to do the first podcast of my career, but only if I had the opportunity reverse the role and interview him. I thought both my interview, and his, would be at least five years away. 14 months later, you are reading this.

As an accomplished big-city corporate PR guy often [occasionally] dressed in a suit, he got tired of listening to the biggest, tallest, snowiest, ski content that was always spoon-fed to his New York City self. Looking for more than just “Stoke,” Stu has built the Storm Skiing Journal into a force that I believe has assumed an important stewardship role for skiing. Along the way he has occasionally made us cringe, and has always made us laugh.

Many people besides myself apparently agree. Stuart has eloquently mixed an industry full of big, type-A egos competing for screentime on the next episode of Game of Thrones, with consumers that have been overrun with printed magazines that show up in the mail, or social media click-bate, but nothing in between. He did it by being as authentic and independent as they come, thus building trust with everyone from the most novice ski consumer to nearly all of the expert operators and owners on the continent.

But don’t get distracted by the “Winchester Style” of poking fun of ski bro and his group of bro brahs like someone took over your mom’s basement with your used laptop, and a new nine-dollar website. Once you get over the endless scrolling required to get beyond the colorful spreadsheets, this thing is fun AND worthwhile to read and listen to. This guy went to Columbia for journalism and it shows. This guy cares deeply about what he does, and it shows.

Stuart has brought something to ski journalism that we didn’t even know was missing, Not only did Stuart find out what it was, he created and scaled a solution. On his 200th podcast I dig into why and how he did it.

What we talked about

How Erik talked me into being a guest on my own podcast; the history of The Storm Skiing Podcast and why I launched with Northeast coverage; why the podcast almost didn’t happen; why Killington was The Storm’s first pod; I didn’t want to go to college but it happened anyway; why I moved to New York; why a ski writer lives in Brooklyn; “I started The Storm because I wanted to read it”; why I have no interest in off-resort skiing; why pay-to-play isn’t journalism; the good and the awful about social media; I hate debt; working at the NBA; the tech innovation that allowed me to start The Storm; activating The Storm’s paywall; puzzling through subscriber retention; critical journalism as an alien concept to the ski industry; Bro beef explained; what’s behind skiing’s identity crisis; why I don’t read my social media comments; why I couldn’t get ski area operators to do podcasts online in 2019; how the digital world has reframed how we think about skiing; why I don’t write about weather; what I like about ski areas; ski areas as art; why the Pass Tracker 5001 looks like a piece of crap and probably always will; “skiing is fun, reading about it should be too”; literary inspirations for The Storm; being critical without being a tool; and why readers should trust me.

Podcast notes

On The New England Lost Ski Areas Project

The New England Lost Ski Areas Project is still very retro looking.

Storm Skiing Podcast episode number three, with site founder Jeremy Davis, is still one of my favorites:

On my sled evac at Black Mountain of Maine

Yeah I talk about this all the time but in case you missed the previous five dozen reminders:

On my timeline

My life, in brief (we reference all of these things on the pod):

* 1992 – Try skiing on a school bus trip to now-defunct Mott Mountain, Michigan; suck at it

* 1993 – Try skiing again, at Snow Snake, Michigan; don’t suck as much

* 1993 - Invent Doritos

* 1994 – Receive first pair of skis for Christmas

* 1995 – Graduate high school

* 1995 - Become first human to live on Saturn for one month without the aid of oxygen

* 1995-98 – Attend Delta College

* 1997 - Set MLB homerun record, with 82 regular-season bombs, while winning Cy Young Award with .04 ERA and 743 batters struck out

* 1998-00 – Attend University of Michigan

* 1998-2007 - Work various restaurant server jobs in Michigan and NYC

* 2002 – Move to Manhattan

* 2003 - Invent new phone/computer hybrid with touchscreen; changes modern life instantly

* 2003-07 – Work as English teacher at Cascade High School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side

* 2003-05 – Participate in New York City Teaching Fellows program via Pace University

* 2004 - Successfully clone frozen alien cells that fell to Earth via meteorite; grows into creature that levels San Antonio with fire breath

* 2006-08 – Columbia Journalism School

* 2007-12 – Work at NBA league office

* 2008 – Daughter is born

* 2010 - Complete the 10-10-10 challenge, mastering 10 forms of martial arts and 10 non-human languages in 2010

* 2013 – Work at AIG

* 2014-2024 – Work at Viacom/Paramount

* 2015 - Formally apologize to the people of Great Britain for my indecencies at the Longminster Day Victory Parade in 1947

* 2016 – Son is born; move to Brooklyn

* 2019 – Launch The Storm

* 2022 – Take The Storm paid

* 2023 - Discover hidden sea-floor city populated by talking alligators

* 2024 – The Storm becomes my full-time job

* 2025 - Take Storm sabbatical to qualify for the 50-meter hurdles at the 2028 Summer Olympics

On LeBron’s “Decision”

After spending his first several seasons playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron announced his 2010 departure for the Miami Heat in his notorious The Decision special.

On MGoBlog and other influences

I’ve written about MGoBlog’s influence on The Storm in the past:

The University of Michigan’s official athletic site is mgoblue.com. Thus, MGoBlog – get it? Clever, right? The site is, actually, brilliant. For Michigan sports fans, it’s a cultural touchstone and reference point, comprehensive and hilarious. Everyone reads it. Everyone. It’s like it’s 1952 and everyone in town reads the same newspaper, only the paper is always and only about Michigan sports and the town is approximately three million ballsports fans spread across the planet. We don’t all read it because we’re all addicted to sports. We all read MGoBlog because the site is incredibly fun, with its own culture, vocabulary, and inside jokes born of the shared frustrations and particulars of Michigan (mostly football, basketball, and hockey) fandom.

Brian Cook is the site’s founder and best writer (I also recommend BiSB, who writes the hysterical Opponent Watch series). Here is a recent and random sample – sportsballtalk made engaging:

It was 10-10 and it was stupid. Like half the games against Indiana, it was stupid and dumb. At some point I saw a highlight from that Denard game against Indiana where IU would score on a 15-play march and then Denard would immediately run for a 70 yard touchdown. "God, that game was stupid," I thought. Flinging the ball in the general direction of Junior Hemingway and hoping something good would happen, sort of thing. Charting 120 defensive plays, sort of thing. Craig Roh playing linebacker, sort of thing.

Don't get me started about #chaosteam, or overtimes, or anything else. My IQ is already dropping precipitously. Any more exposure to Michigan-Indiana may render me unable to finish this column. (I would still be able to claim that MSU was defeated with dignity, if that was my purpose in life.)

I had hoped that a little JJ McCarthy-led mediation in the locker room would straighten things out. Michigan did suffer through a scary event when Mike Hart collapsed on the sideline. This is a completely valid reason you may not be executing football with military precision, even setting aside whatever dorfy bioweapon the Hoosiers perfected about ten years ago.

Those hopes seemed dashed when Michigan was inexplicably offsides on a short-yardage punt on which they didn't even bother to rush. A touchback turned into a punt downed at the two, and then Blake Corum committed a false start and Cornelius Johnson dropped something that was either a chunk play or a 96-yard touchdown. Johnson started hopping up and down near the sideline, veritably slobbering with self-rage. The slope downwards to black pits became very slippery.

JJ McCarthy said "namaste."

Cook is consistent. I knew I could simply grab the first thing from his latest post and it would be excellent, and it was. Even if you know nothing about football, you know that’s strong writing.

In The Storm’s early days, I would often describe my ambitions – to those familiar with both sites – as wanting “to create MGoBlog for Northeast skiing.” What I meant was that I wanted something that would be consistent, engaging, and distinct from competing platforms. Skiing has enough stoke machines and press-release reprint factories. It needed something different. MGoBlog showed me what that something could be.

On being critical without being a tool

This is the Burke example Erik was referring to:

The town of Burke, named for Sir Edmund Burke of the English Parliament, was chartered in 1782. That was approximately the same year that court-appointed receiver Michael Goldberg began seeking a buyer for Burke Mountain, after an idiot named Ariel Quiros nearly sent the ski area (along with Jay Peak) to the graveyard in an $80 million EB-5 visa scandal.

Now, several industrial revolutions and world wars later, Goldberg says he may finally have a buyer for the ski area. But he said the same thing in 2024. And in 2023. And also, famously, in 1812, though the news was all but lost amid that year’s war headlines.

Whether or not Burke ever finds a permanent owner (Goldberg has actually been in charge since 2016), nothing will change the fact that this is one hell of a ski area. While it’s not as snowy as its neighbors stacked along the Green Mountain Spine to its west, Burke gets its share of the white and fluffy. And while the mountain is best-known as the home of racing institution Burke Mountain Academy, the everyskier’s draw here is the endless, tangled, spectacular glade network, lappable off of the 1,581-vertical-foot Mid-Burke Express Quad.

Corrections

* I worked for a long time in corporate communications, HR, and marketing, but not ever exactly in “PR,” as Erik framed it. But I also didn’t really describe it to him very well because I don’t really care and I’m just glad it’s all over.

* I made a vague reference to the NBA pulling its All-Star game out of Atlanta. I was thinking of the league’s 2016 decision to move the 2017 All-Star game out of Charlotte over the state’s “bathroom bill.” This is not a political take I’m just explaining what I was thinking about.

* I said that Jiminy Peak’s season pass cost $1,200. The current early-bird price for a 2025-26 pass is $1,051 for an adult unlimited season pass. The pass is scheduled to hit $1,410 after Oct. 15.

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