The Truth About Outreach Magazine

Several friends have emailed me about my "letter" to Outreach Magazine that appears in the "Readers Write" section of the March/April 2007 issue.  It is entitled "Where Are The Little Guys" and...through their "creative editing"....Outreach Magazine butchered my original blog post from which they stole the "letter" from. 

Let me set the record straight....I NEVER WROTE A LETTER TO OUTREACH MAGAZINE!!!

On January 8, 2007 I posted a blog entry entitled "Outreach's List Of Crap-O-La" in which I took Outreach Magazine to task for their list of America's Most Innovative Churches.  Soon after my blog post came out somebody over at Squidoo picked up on it and other bloggers began to link to it.  Over a week's time I was generating thousands of hits to the post...not to mention countless emails.

At the end of January I was contacted through email by Outreach Magazine.  They expressed their feelings about my blog post (not too good, as you could imagine), but felt that "their readers needed to hear what I had to say".  They offered for me to write a letter to their editor, which would be printed in the "Readers Write" section of the magazine.  I turned down the offer.  I felt that everything I needed to say about the subject was in my original blog post.  To write a more toned down version for publication would be a waste of time and...dishonest.  I did offer for Outreach Magazine to reprint my original post...as is...without any editing...as an article...not a letter to the editor thing.  I made sure that I spelled out in my email that the reprint of my blog post had to be "as is without any editing".

This brings us to today...with the current Outreach Magazine having a "letter" printed in it from Chris Elrod.  After receiving emails from people letting me know it was in there (I'm not a subscriber anymore) I stopped by the church my mother is on staff at (she's a subscriber) so I could read what I "wrote".  Let me just say...it's edited...it's not the original post...it's butchered...it sucks!!!  It is not my thoughts or my writing.  It is Outreach Magazine's edited take on what they wanted their readers to see...or not see.

I am completely disturbed...and disappointed by all of this...for several reasons:

1) Outreach Marketing was never granted permission to print the edited version they did.

2) Outreach Marketing showed a complete lack of integrity in editing out what they did from my original post.

3) Most importantly, Outreach Marketing violated copyright laws by reprinting my blog post in violation of what I had given them permission for.

4) The editors of Outreach Magazine totally misrepresented themselves is what they said they wanted their readers to see and what they wanted to do with my thoughts.

5) Through their editing I was misrepresented to the readers of Outreach Magazine.  What appears in the "letter" is only about 25% of what I actually wrote.

So the question becomes...what I am going to do about it?  The answer is...what I just did...blog about it.

Now you know the truth about my "letter" in Outreach Magazine.

Comments

[djchuang]

I hope you get to resolve your grievance in some way. It's my guess that it is a common practice to revise letters to editors for length, but I don't know what the recourse is for lack of permission or consent. And I'm not sure where things stand for blogs that are publicly available, if a clear copyright-and-all-rights-reserved is not explicitly stated.

[Jimmy Eldridge]

Hey Chris. What is up with that magazine? They had contacted me about writing an article for them a few weeks ago. I'm glad I told them no after what you have just said. It's evident that they don't really want to hear an alternate opinion to their own.
That is what I like about your blogs. You speak what you feel is right. That's what we want to do at RelevantChristian.com too.
Keep fighting the fight.
Peace!