On The Masthead

The photo above, of these sweet wooden-shafted ice tools, was the header image atop my first ever Outside byline. In the winter of 2015, when I wrote it, I was still in college. I remember going to my local library and posting up at a big table with my laptop, occasionally scrambling to pack up and run out to my car to accept phone calls from my sources. I needed a quiet, contemplative place to write because absolutely nothing I had done in my career up to that point was this important. Though I was a long way from having it all figured out, I had been writing for Backpacker (which at this point was under different ownership than Outside) with some regularity for a couple years and was making progress in my career. But if you asked me prior to this where I wanted to have a byline, Outside was always my first answer. I couldn't mess this up. In retrospect, this was ridiculous. This was a web-only story, a simple little profile of people making a unique piece of gear. Not even an actual review, just a "look at this cool thing" kind of article. Jon Krakauer I was not. But in so many ways it didn't matter. 

 

Last week, a collection of longtime Outside writers and editors sent a letter to Outside Inc. CEO Robin Thurston asking that their names be taken off the magazine's masthead, citing layoffs, directives to stay away from investigative reporting and politics, and what they see as the shift away from "bold, spirited journalism." "Evolution is necessary," they said. "Dispensing with journalistic rigor is not."

 

Reading through the names of that letter's signatories took me back to writing my first story for the online edition. While I knew personally or worked with very few of them, I read the words of pretty much all of them. Their stories were what made Outside the magazine I so desperately wanted to be associated with. They inspired me—professionally, personally, recreationally. And they still do. We have no interest in seeing Trails replicate the glory days of Outside. We're very different publications for a number of reasons. But the traits that used to be so evident in Outside's storytelling—bravery, ambition, and rigor—absolutely inspire what we're trying to do with Trails. 

 

I'll never be able to repay those folks and so many others for the impact they had on me as a hiker, adventurer, writer, and editor. But I reached out to a few of them last week to thank them for their most recent piece of writing, this letter. I know, maybe I'm biased. While I still don't consider Outside or any of its titles competitors of ours (we make completelydifferent products), I haven't been shy in disagreeing with many of the things that have been done there in the last few years. But, of course: It's tough to watch something you love be mistreated. And I was thankful that they were standing up for it. 

 

At the end of the day, Outside is little more than a trademark. It's branding. It's a vessel. And it's changing. What made it so important to so many of us wasn't the big yellow O, it was the stories inside. And it was the people who crafted them. And, clearly, they're not changing. I'm thankful for that.