The End of Newf Tide As We Know It and Why Many Members Will Walk Away

The Newfoundland Club of America recently announced they will be discontinuing the printed Newf Tide, its long-running quarterly publication. For people outside the club, that might sound minor — just another magazine going digital or disappearing quietly.

But for those of us inside the club, it wasn’t minor at all.

Newf Tide was one of the very few tangible things members received in exchange for their annual dues. It wasn’t a Facebook group post. It wasn’t an email blast. It wasn’t a PDF buried in a members-only portal. It was something physical that showed up in your mailbox four times a year.

For me personally, it was one of the very few reasons I remained a member.

I’ll be honest — without the physical version of Newf Tide, I will have a much harder time justifying renewing my membership this time around. That magazine was one of the only parts of the organization that still felt real and useful.

And I am not the only member that feels that way.

Over the years, the Newfoundland Club of America has increasingly relied on its members to fill a growing number of volunteer roles — and when those calls go out, there is an expectation that someone will step forward to keep the organization running. Newf Tide was different. It wasn’t about status or internal hierarchy. It focused on what brought people there in the first place: the dogs, their history, health, breeding, accomplishments, and the community built around them.

And that matters even more when you consider how much weight the club’s name still carries. Being an NCA member functions as a kind of magical stamp of approval in the public eye — a signal that a breeder is “legitimate” simply by association, regardless of what their actual practices look like. That’s a much bigger conversation for another day, but it makes the value proposition of membership even more important: if people are paying to be part of that system, there should be something concrete and meaningful in return.

When you remove the one thing that feels universally valuable, you shouldn’t be surprised when people start questioning why they’re paying to be there at all.

A Realistic Solution That Doesn’t Require Killing the Print Edition

I want to be clear: this isn’t just me complaining without offering alternatives. I have years of experience working in a print shop. I’ve ordered paper. I’ve priced bindings. I’ve assembled publications. I understand how quickly print costs add up — and I also know there are many ways to reduce them without eliminating print altogether.

Right now, Newf Tide is produced as a premium magazine. The paper stock is thick, glossy, and expensive. The glued binding is also one of the more costly binding methods, especially for lower-volume runs. That combination alone drives production costs far higher than necessary.

There is a very obvious middle ground that the club could have chosen instead of going digital-only.

The publication could be printed on a lighter-weight paper stock. It doesn’t need to feel like a coffee-table magazine to be valuable. Most members care about the content, not whether the pages are heavy enough to double as cardstock.

The binding could also be changed. A stapled (saddle-stitched) format is dramatically cheaper than glued binding and is commonly used for magazines of this size. It still looks professional, still holds up well, and still gives members something physical to receive, read, and keep.

Those two changes alone — paper weight and binding — have the potential to cut printing costs significantly while preserving the one thing members actually valued: a physical publication.

What makes the decision so frustrating is that the club didn’t choose to downgrade the product in order to keep it alive. They chose to eliminate it.

That sends a very clear message: member experience and retention were not the priority.

Why This Still Undermines the Value of Membership

Membership in the NCA isn’t cheap compared to other national breed clubs. And unlike many modern organizations, you don’t get much in return that actually helps you as a breeder, owner, or exhibitor. There’s no meaningful support. No modern marketing tools. No education pipeline that competes with what independent creators and breed experts already provide online. No digital infrastructure that justifies the cost.

So when they announced Newf Tide will be moving digital, so did the last clear, concrete benefit for a lot of people.

And yes — many members will likely drop their membership over this.

Not because they don’t care about the breed.
Not because they don’t value preservation.
But because at some point, you have to ask what you’re paying for.

People stayed in the club for the magazine even when they felt disconnected from the politics, the favoritism, and the increasingly outdated structure. It was something you could point to and say, “At least I get this. At least I get something that celebrates the dogs.”

Now that it’s gone, what’s left?

An organization that often feels more invested in protecting its hierarchy than supporting its community — one that leans on the passion and unpaid labor of breeders and volunteers while quietly stripping away the few benefits members actually used.

This isn’t just about a magazine.

It’s about the erosion of value.

And when people let their memberships lapse this year, it won’t be because they stopped loving Newfoundlands.

It will be because the club stopped giving them a reason to stay.