February 9, 2001

An open letter regarding SCOUTER Magazine:

Early in 1995, I launched an independent print newsletter for Boy Scout leaders. This was roughly a year and a half after my friend and mentor William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt had passed away, and after living and traveling with him I felt I had some valuable ideas to share with the Scouting community. I also felt a strong desire to “give back” to the Movement that had given me so much. I was 22 years old when I launched that publication, and it also marked my entry into the business world.

From the very first day the response was overwhelming. The idea was never to be an alternative to official publications, but our success was a testament to how much the grassroots of Scouting really wanted a forum for sharing their ideas. The real problem though, from those earliest days, was that there was never any capital to keep pace with the demand. But the publication nonetheless grew, both in size and circulation. Eventually we reached a circulation of nearly 40,000 Scout leaders. And while that circulation included many paying subscribers, many more requested and received the magazine for free.

Each time we released a new issue—progressively better—we would run ourselves bankrupt paying to produce, distribute and support the growth of the magazine.

Along the way, we built a staff... some volunteers, some leaving other jobs to join the effort full time. For years our staff literally worked 15 to 17 hour days just to support the publication, more often than not without reliable pay. The sacrifices made by some of the wonderful people involved in this publication were monumental, but it all seemed worthwhile because we loved what we were doing, and so did our readers. We rarely received letters that just said, “I like your magazine”… we often received letters that said “God bless you for what you’re trying to do!”

For five straight years we published SCOUTER Magazine, and struggled and worked as hard as we possibly could to maintain its success. SCOUTER was never a labor of profit but always a labor of love.

As a boy, Scouting taught me not to give up, even in the face of overwhelming challenge. For five years I (and many others supporting SCOUTER Magazine) refused to give up, no matter how difficult the challenge grew.

I avoided what was the most difficult decision of my life: giving up was failure, and I just couldn’t accept that something so positive should fail. But Scouting also taught me to Do My Best, and to act with honor. In late 2000, after much personal angst I made the decision to put the print magazine into a cocoon. We had all Done our Best, and our best was not good enough to keep the magazine afloat. Worse yet, continuing to fight the losing battle without the sufficient capital we needed to reach critical mass resulted in massive debt (corporate and personal) and compromised our honor.

Placing the magazine into a cocoon allowed me to focus on paying off the debt that the publication had incurred. At a time when many businesses were filing bankruptcy and running away, we chose what we thought was the more honorable path. (We're not looking for acknowledgement, just revealing how strongly we felt about the situation.) Without going into the gory detail of that process, let me just say that instead of hiding from those debts we faced them, and today I’m proud of the fact that nearly all of the debt has been paid off... it has not been easy.

The magazine remains in a cocoon (we’ve even got issues of it complete that can’t be released!). It cannot emerge without financial backing, which may happen again some day. But that someday might not be soon. Which brings me to the current situation: there has to be some closure or transition... closure for subscribers, closure for the supporters, volunteers and staff of the publication.

I also want to focus more attention on SCOUTER.com. The web site was launched in November 1995 as an effort of the print magazine, and grew, surpassing the print magazine in reach. Today, there are thousands of resources published on the site and tens of thousands of monthly visitors.  SCOUTER.com provides free web hosting to nearly 2,000 Scout troops, packs and other units. It is the largest collection of handpicked links to Scouting on the web, cataloging more than 12,000 Scout unit web pages and another 10,000 pages of content for Scouting.

Bringing closure to the imminent return of the print magazine could have meant discontinuing everything associated with it, including SCOUTER.com. Certainly, the idea that the magazine was "on hold" has had a limiting effect on expanding SCOUTER.com.

Closing SCOUTER.com (or even ignoring opportunities to improve it) because of the failure of the print magazine is like allowing dead limbs to kill the tree. This open letter, which is deeply personal for me to write, is the official "pruning" of those dead limbs. SCOUTER Magazine, the print publication, is gone for now. SCOUTER.com, the web portal, is alive and will remain... we’ve been a mainstay on the web since the "dark ages of the Internet".

We did a lot of good with the print magazine, and I don’t need to say so myself. We had a real impact on Scouting all over the country, helping to improve the mentoring relationship between many leaders and boys. I believe we played a small role in influencing Scouting’s official publications to once again include more "grassroots" content (take a look at Scouting magazine before 1995 and after). And in the end, SCOUTER.com may be the best legacy of the print magazine.

Ultimately, and on a purely personal note, I believe I kept a promise that I made to a legendary figure in my life, a promise in some small way to continue in his tradition to impact the Movement of Scouting.

In that spirit,

TERRY HOWERTON
Publisher