What makes a good story in a magazine?

I have no credentials with this either, but a good place to start- if you followed the medium, is to generate story ideas that you've never seen before. Nobody wants to read about a trip, etc. thats already been done and rehashed over and over. Obviously another good way to start is to find people within the sport that you can embed yourself with and document stories and characters being created by themselves. It all depends on what kind of perspective you are trying to take, it's a very wide open field. And a good launching point for all of this if you want to sharpen your teeth is web- there is a never ending hunger for stories online (photos help!).

...adding to that, while trying to keep ideas fresh, completely obscure ones don't usually work either. There needs to be a relatable point of interest, no one wants to read about some random bro.

It can be pretty much anything. The stories I did for NS this summer were easy because it was based on skiing and experiencing culture in South America.  But you need to look at what you think people would be interested in. If your pitching a story to Frequency probably wouldnt pitch the same story as you would to say Freeskier.  Think about the audience that will most likely going to have.  Another thing is being creative.  A lot of stories are just , hey we went heli skiing, got sick pow, drank some beers, then went up looking for lines in the heli. then we skiied them, end of story, and I know I get sick of hearing about that stuff.  So think about what could be an interesting trip and that can help.

id say anything that inspires u and gets u wanting to go skiing the most.

acourding to freeskier its following peter olenick around the bars and interviewing simon dumont every month...