John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part II

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We offered room and board in exchange for teaching whoever responded what we knew about putting out a magazine. That brought in Kriss Kessler and Laurie Ezzell — two teenagers who worked shoulder to shoulder with Jane and me. I can remember Kriss and Laurie putting in one of those day-night-day-night-half-the-third-day work sessions with me to get an issue out. Fifty-plus straight hours on their feet and they never complained. And I couldn't have done it without them.

Then there were local high school and college aged people like Larry Holler, Cheryl Malec, Keith Shoemaker, and Phyllis MacGillivray. The first week of part-time work Cheryl put in, I remember, totaled 87 hours. You can imagine the time the rest of us were racking up.

The point is that there was no way in hell for Jane and I to make Mother Earth News succeed the way we started the magazine. And even with the volunteer and incredibly underpaid help that folks like Kriss, Laurie, Larry, Cheryl, Keith, and Phyllis gave so willingly ... there was still absolutely no chance that we'd ever make it. But we did. There's a lot more people than John and Jane Shuttleworth who went above and beyond the call of duty that first year to make Mother Earth News a success.

And there's a lot more now. Kenny Hodges, for instance, has been with us for three and a half years ... and there's been several times during that period when I would have quit if I hadn't had Ken to lean on. I wouldn't have made it other times if Julie Needham hadn't been cranking out a certain amount of the copy for the magazine or Bob Crudele hadn't kept that copy going through layout. Bob's moved on now but Craig Sponseller, in many ways, does an even better job of keeping layout in line. And so it goes right on through every part of our operation today. Right through Frank Gragg, who keeps the building clean. Did you ever try to put out a magazine when every typewriter, every lightboard, everything you touched was filthy? Frank's a valuable man.

People, in short, are what breathe life into a magazine. You can have the greatest idea in the world ... but unless you assemble the right crew of people to help you put that idea across, you're dead in the water. We've had our share of yo-yos over the years — mostly because I'm a real softie when it comes to hiring — but we've also been blessed with some of the best damn help anyone could ever wish for. I'd advise all those would-be publishers and editors to be as lucky as we've been.

PLOWBOY: All right, John, now that you've brought us up to date on what I'll call the "nuts and bolts" aspects of publishing Mother Earth News, I'd like to ask you how in the heck you always seem to keep at least one jump ahead of everyone else.

In 1969, before you'd even published the first issue of Mother Earth News, and well before any other environmental publication called for the development of the so-called "alternative" sources of energy, you were placing advertisements for Mother Earth News that seriously presented solar, wind, and water power as energy sources. Then, a little later, it was Mother Earth News' emphasis on such subjects that encouraged Don Marier to put ads in your magazine for — and publish the first issues of Alternative Sources of Energy... which, in turn, has led to all kinds of experiments with more natural forms of power.

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