Stories Are Merely “Content”

Grayson Schaffer sharing letters to Robin Thurston on Instagram:

After the latest staff cuts at @outsidemagazine , where all of the remaining veteran editors were let go, the majority of the magazine’s longtime contributors asked to be taken off the masthead. 

Here is Hampton Sides’ letter, and you really gotta link through and read the whole thing:

You need to know that there are many thousands of people, young and old, who are saddened, frustrated, bewildered, and infuriated by what you have done. Systematically, bit by bit, you have hacked the meat off the bone, fired the best minds, and jettisoned all the institutional memory. In doing so, you have turned a great if fragile publication, one of America’s best, into a crass and soulless purveyor of gear, nothing more.

The kicker really is, as Sides also finds offensive, that Thurston calls himself “founder of Outside”:

How dare you call yourself the “founder” of Outside, a magazine that was created in 1977 by legendary people who knew and loved magazines. Your tone-deafness to its history shows just how little respect you hold for the ship you’ve run.

At least he has his pronouns in his email signature, I guess.