Dragon Boat Media

On DBN:

Follow these links to specific Dragon Boat Media on DBN:

DBW-Magazine – DSN-Magazine – DBW-TV – Photos

Dragon Boat Media – Brief History:

Over the past two decades the media have changed dramatical. Modern development of technologies in communication and publishing are the reason! Just think about the Social Media.

For the sport of Dragon Boat Racing there never was much dedicated dragon boat media around! – Since the early 1990’s the IDBF published its Newsletter, first as printed hard-copy and sent by post to its readers. Later they distributed it as PDF named “Dragon Boat International” (DBI) via e-mail. Very much later an independent paper-magazine “Dragon Boat World” (DBW) came up in Canada. And that was it – for a long time.

As far as known, when Henning Wiekhorst’s (that’s me) Creative Dragon Works (CDW) established “Dragon Boat Net” (DBN) as a website for all world-wide, he created the first independent online-media for Dragon Boating in 2006. Its success triggered the IDBF’s attention. So the IDBF asked CDW to take over the only existing, but meanwhile failing magazine “Dragon Boat World” from Canada? The initial answer was a “No”! – And certainly I didn’t want to take over the legal entity of DBW! – However, after some persuading and making a deal with the IDBF to publish its DBI-Newsletter as paid advertising within the magazine, I finally agreed to publish a magazine under my own entity.

The deal with the IDBF ensured independency and journalistic freedom of the actual magazine-part. It did not allow any content changes of the inserted IDBF-Newsletter. Finally the new magazine “Dragon Boat World International” (DBWI) came out in January 2008. From then CDW published the magazine quarterly – eleven times, almost three years – until summer 2010.

Back in 2007 Creative Dragon Works had become a media-partner for the IDBF. As such I received the order to produce a video and other marketing material for presenting the sport of dragon boating. The focus aimed on supporting the IDBF’s application to becoming a member of GAISF, the General Assembly of International Sport Federations. In April 2007 the IDBF became a member of GAISF!

From early 2008 until 2010 CDW took care about the IDBF-website as its web-master and created the idbfworldchamps-site, which in 2009 delivered the first time live-race-results from the World-Championships in Prague.

IP based TV failed!

Starting from its beginning “Dragon Boat Net” published self-produced videos. It was back in early 2007, when the IDBF mediated the contact between CDW and “The Dragon Boat Channel” also known as DBTV. This was a new set up as IP-based television broad casting only for the dragon boat sport. Initially they wanted me to shut down Dragon Boat Net, which I refused. At the end we agreed on linking each others websites and me to act as content provider and Asia correspondent.

DBTV gave an extremely positive outlook. They were confident to raise a lot of sponsorship and advertising money. They wanted to create something very big, something like never seen before in dragon boat sport. – Well me, I had some doubts – not because of a lack on positive thinking, but one should stay somehow realistic.

After about half a year later I stopped hearing from DBTV. Nothing new was posted on their website, nobody was reachable anymore and the complete thing went down – Silence!

The IDBF was quite disappointed about DBTV. They were sad to having lost a tool for promoting the dragon boat sport. This was the point, when CDW offered to build up “Dragon Boat World Television”.

The idea was to build up DBW-TV as a YouTube-like video platform, offering some additional broadcasting. So I started to work on it and the website came alive. It did not develop to bad, but suffered the same death as Dragon Boat World Magazine in 2011! Due to the general financial crisis at the time sponsoring fell short. Me as the sole proprietor of CDW, I had to pick up another job, leaving me no further time to do the media-job for dragon boating anymore. – As a conclusion I have to admit, not having done better than the others and the final result was – Silence!

Dragon Boat Media – The Crash:

Looking at the media for dragon boating, 2011 was the big crash-year! All in a sudden the media were gone! – The IDBF, not to say Mike Haslam as the federation’s president continued making its Newsletter DBI, now sent to readers as PDF via e-mail. When he retired as IDBF-President, Mike started as a private person making an independent e-magazine named “Dragon Sport News”.

When I picked up a job in 2011, the intention was to keep on making DBWM aside. This proofed to be impossible due to a to high workload. – Running such a magazine is a full time job, even if you publish only four issues a year! However, in April 2018 Creative Dragon Works started to publish the magazine again. The format was a mobile-device-friendly PDF. It was sent to readers via e-mail and provided as download from Dragon Boat Net free of charge. To mark the magazine’s new era the look has changed to the “blue” and the name as “The Dragon Boat World’s Magazine”.

Although there are no cost for printing and postage with an e-magazine, everything else remains the same. Believe it or not, as magazine-maker one of your biggest problems will become the catching of stories, news and content in general. When newly starting a magazine, this might not apply for the first, second or perhaps the third issue, but after that it will! You need to be well connected and you have to pamper your sources!

Getting informations from the Federations is nowadays more difficult than ever! They all have their Social Media channels and in fact have become competitors to the independent media.

Despite the time you spend on research, writing articles, doing the picture editing and graphics including layout and setting, you also will need to travel – and that costs! – What about supporting your living? The Social Media have become very popular and are making it difficult for magazines to create an income through ad-sales. To keep it short, making a magazine for dragon boating simply doesn’t pay off, it actually costs the publisher quite a price. – That’s the simple truth!

Futures Outlook:

To clarify, we are talking about independent media dedicated to the sport of dragon boating. It’s not about dragon boating in the media!

During the seven years of Creative Dragon Works’ absence, we saw two attempts of filling the gap with new magazines in Australia and Hong Kong. Unfortunately both of them failed . By this there are in fact only two guys left on the market of independent Dragon Boat Media. It is Mike Haslam and me myself as Creative Dragon Works.

Mike, as founder and former president of the IDBF, nowadays receiving pension, doesn’t depend on creating income. He simply lives for the sport of Dragon Boating and loves to write. He publishes his e-magazine Dragon Sport News (DSN) normally four times a year. Sometimes he falls short for an issue and during Corona there also was not much to write. But basically DSN is safe and reliable in its existence.

From my side, I will focus on Dragon Boat Net and further develop it as a media and archive for dragon boating. The Race-Calendar will remain as one of the key-features. “The Dragon Boat World’s Magazine” I will keep on my hand to publish once in while special editions as multi pages e-magazine coming in a PDF-file.

Learn more about the specific media resources by using the following links: