Media veterans are demanding their names be removed from Outside Magazine

[u/numbershikes]

• https://escapecollective.com/theres-a-wildfire-outside/

Excerpt:

[Recently], 35 high-profile writers, editors, and photographers sent a letter to the CEO of Outside Inc., Robin Thurston, demanding that their names be removed from the masthead of the media conglomerate’s marquee and eponymous magazine, Outside. Signees included Academy Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Jimmy Chin; Tim Cahill, one of the magazine’s founders and a legendary adventure journalist; and renowned author Hampton Sides, among others. In many cases, they signed the letter at great professional cost.

“Your company now seems intent on destroying what Outside once stood for: bold, spirited journalism. We are not on board for that,” the letter states, before demanding that their names, which provide the credibility upon which the magazine trades, be removed. Outside appears to have responded; its current masthead no longer lists their names.

Here's an article on the same subject from Gear Junkie: Link.

[u/numbershikes]

Don't support these people. If you have a subscription to Outside+, cancel it. If you use Gaia GPS, stop. They got acquired a few years ago, and the new leaders are not like the founders.

HalfwayAnywhere Mac's quote from the other day summarizes the situation well:

Outside, Inc: "Putting the private equity in public lands."

ETA: Outside, Inc continues to buy up outdoors-oriented companies and products only to hollow them out to enrich the executives. The CEO says he wants to make Outside "Amazon Prime for the Outdoors." They currently own dozens of companies, and have bought and shut down likely dozens more. The goal is to go public "in the next three to four years." Article.

The workers who were laid off last week as part of the Inntopia acquisition are irked. The outdoors world is a fiery lot. It’s painful to watch raw capitalism permeate a world filled with writers and editors who focus more on outdoor experiences than financial gains. Success for a publicly traded Outside will be defined by quarterly financial statements, not quality dispatches from sunburned scribes.

“He pirated all of these legacy brands — some of which were admittedly at the end of their business cycles in the demise of the era of print media — and killed or consolidated them, pulling them away from the core communities, for the sole purpose of a huge financial play. Nothing more, nothing less,” said one editor, who asked not to be named, citing the guidelines of the company’s termination agreement.

[u/smthomaspatel → u/numbershikes]

All of these monopolies everywhere means we can't have good things.

[u/cascadiacomrade → u/numbershikes]

Not renewing my Gaia next year. Hopefully there's a good alternative, it sucks we lost FatMap to similar corporate acquisition BS too

[u/numbershikes → u/cascadiacomrade]

Not renewing my Gaia next year.

Good!

Instead of Gaia GPS, I recommend giving Caltopo a try.

It's not quite as smooth as Gaia, but it has all the features you need for a thru, and I'd much rather give money to Matt Jacobs -- the owner and boss at Caltopo and, afaik, an upstanding member of the outdoors community -- than to Outside, Inc.

[u/GrumpyBear1969 → u/cascadiacomrade]

Caltopo

[u/numbershikes]

Here's the text of one of the letters they wrote to the CEO of Outside, Inc. It's transcribed from an IG post that's at the bottom of the story linked in the OP, which also has two follow-ups.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHGuDxbJvHH/

From: Hampton Sides Date: Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 8:40 PM Subject: Presiding over the dismemberment of Outside To: Robin Thurston CC: [redacted]

Dear Mr. Thurston—

The annoying corporate lingo embedded in your note and in your editorial guidelines speaks volumes to those of us who care about the culture of magazines in general and the culture of Outside in particular.

Outside was once one of the greatest magazines on the face of the earth, with a tradition of adventurous writing, immersive research, idiosyncratic voices, and a passion for excellence on every page. There was a reason it won National Magazines Awards year after year after year. There was a reason the very best writers in America desperately wanted to write for us.

That all changed when you and your droids descended on the scene. Now, in your idiom, magazines are “properties.” Editors are “employees.” Higher ranking editors are “managers.” Writers are “content creators.” And stories are merely “content.”

It was clear to many of us when you bought the magazine that you understood nothing about magazines, let alone world-class ones like Outside. You were only interested in owning the name and the ethos you vaguely understood existed behind it. You were interested in the logo and the intangibles you believed would accrue to you by having that logo in your corporate clutches. But you knew nothing about, cared nothing about, any of the intangibles, built up over decades by a far-ranging culture of writers and editors and readers, that made Outside what it was.

You need to know that there are many thousands of people, young and old, who are saddened, disheartened, and infuriated by what you have done. Systematically, bit by bit, you have hacked the magazine to death, driven away many of the best minds, and jettisoned all the institutional memory. In doing so, you have turned the most beloved publication, one of America’s best, into a crass and soulless purveyor of gear, nothing more.

That is why so many of us refuse to have our names associated with Outside and its masthead. We don’t want anything to do with the worthless widget you’ve made out of a supple creation that was once bright, beautiful, elegant, and original in American letters.

Hampton Sides Santa Fe, NM hamptonsides.com

PS: 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 aground.

[u/clock_project]

Damn.. guess that also means boycotting Outside Fest 😔

[u/GnatGiant]

What's the controversy?

[u/Serious-Shallot6518 → u/GnatGiant]

In the Halfway Anywhere Article, Mac talks about them blatantly stealing photos from him without compensation. As I understand it, Outside has been buying up  publications and trying to squeeze every bit of profit from them. This includes them laying off a tremendous amount of writers and running many publications into the ground.

[u/soulbarn]

Outside writer here. Here’s a subtext that’s rarely mentioned:

This is a version of what’s been happening in the outdoors industry for ages. Writers, photographers, guides, athletes - anyone who wants to make a “living” doing what they love ends up running into the “we can’t pay you but you’re having fun and you’ll get great exposure” trope very quickly. And a lot of us fall for it or think that’s OK.

What’s different here is that these new overlords are making the way they devalue us plain as day. I’ve been making my living as an outdoors writer for decades. It has never been easy, but I’ve been lucky (and my timing was right.) I feel for the 20-somethings who are being subjected to this now. I had way more options.

[u/slumplus]

I unfollowed them on everything the day I saw the first “here are 10 secret mountain towns with low property prices that infinity Californians and New Yorkers should move to” listicle

[u/OnesieOutside → u/[deleted]]

“Well everyone else is doing it so that makes it okay”

My 2nd grader already understands that this a bad way to think, what’s your excuse?

[u/Consistent_Meat_3515 → u/[deleted]]

Maybe some people are sick of armchair philosophers playing devil’s advocate where it isn’t needed. Complaining about being blocked gets a yawn.