eCache

Today’s Cacher: Not a Magazine for This Cacher

Today’s Cacher touts itself as The Magazine for Geocachers Everywhere. It is currently a monthly online ‘zine that reports on various aspects of the caching community. I placed reports in italics for there is little reporting done at Today’s Cacher. The modus operandi of the magazine is to publish what is submitted, after staff members edit the work. Perhaps there has been an article here or there which has been reported. I do not follow the magazine very closely.

The editor of the magazine, Jerry Carter, is a self-proclaimed GC.com supporter. That is not necessarily a bad trait. But Mr. Carter permits his support of GC.com to skew the perspective of his magazine. Groundspeak, the owners of GC.com, are financial supporters of Today’s Cacher. Groundspeak and TerraCaching.com are at odds over TC.com’s Terms of Use document. The two documents are quite similar. The feud escalated to a legal matter when Groundspeak dropped some lawyerly papers to emphasize its disgruntlement.

This was all hashed out a month ago when representatives of TC.com negotiated to have an article published in Today’s Cacher. Remember, there is little or no reporting by the magazine. An article was drafted by a TC.com member detailing the objectives of the site and how to participate. Sure, it was a pro-TC.com article. Carter announced the article would not run becasue the magazine will not be caught in the middle of a legal battle. (registration required)

Mr. Carter is caught in the middle of this feud. As a supporter of GC.com, he does not desire to cause any ripples. Because Groundspeak financially supports him, Carter cannot afford to enrage the frog. So, we know that Today’s Cacher is not an objective magazine. It will not publish about a site that his financial supporters have not approved.

That is the stage for the latest issue regarding the magazine. It was pointed out recently in the GC.com fora that a mock-up page for the April 2005 issue of the magazine contained a graphic photograph of cats hung from a tree. It is postulated that the image was copied from The Cat Tree of William Creek. The original poster of the thread, RuffRidr, stated

The headline was something like “Buy our mag or we’ll kill you…” then there was a pic of some dude chomping a cigar, then a picture of a bunch of furs hanging from a tree and then “…and string up your cats.” Then there was like a very rough draft of an editorial.

Today’s Cacher is set to become a print edition in June 2005. How and why that will work is beyond me. But one has to wonder about the leadership of this magazine. While the mock-up was most likely not intended for public eyes (the page was password-protected after the content was commented on), there is obviously something wrong with the judgement of those responsible. I do not want to go off on some politically-correct rant. It was, however, most conceivable that that content would be found to be objectionable by more than a few people. While Mr. Carter is free to publish what he wants, it sure seems like a poor choice of material to post when one is trying to gain paying customers. I do not associate with many folks who are likely to cough up $20 annually for cats hanging from a tree with a sarcastic heading. I know I won’t pay for that . . . or anything else Today’s Cacher wants to charge for.

Mr. Carter, are you sure you want to continue to stand by The Magazine for Geocachers Everywhere?