THEN & NOW
: Shouts from Scout A BRIEF ORAL HISTORY OF SCOUT MAGAZINES COMPILED BY LILLY MILMAN | PHOTO BY SASHA PEDRO
ILAN MOCHARI: I was waiting tables at a restaurant in Cambridge called Full Moon. I worked with a waitress named Jen Bates, who’s an actress. She has since moved to the Bay Area. Jen knew Holli. I don’t remember how they knew each other, but they were friends. When Holli moved up here and wanted to start a publication, she was just asking around if anyone knew any writers at all. I think Jen mentioned my name to Holli. At the time it wasn’t, “Scout needs an editor.” Holli just needed someone to write the main article, which was going to be—you’ll never believe this— but it was going to be about the extension of the Green Line. HOLLI BANKS: I had worked for a small newspaper in Selma, Alabama right out of high school, so from ‘94 until almost 2000. Then I went off to theater school. I had done an annual Chamber of Commerce guide that was more magazine style with a group of women in Texas to supplement my less-than-lucrative acting career. … I moved to Somerville because my best friend moved to Cambridge. I moved the week after the ‘08 election. When I got here, I had no job and no place to live. I started sending out my resume. … I couldn’t get a job, I came to the most educated city in the United States with a musical theater conservatory degree. 24 Then & Now | scoutsomerville.com
I saw all of these really cool, independently owned businesses. I was going to do a coupon book because I didn’t know how to put together editorial, and at the time I ran into Ilan and he was a writer and editor. ILAN: I don’t think I have the editor’s note until the third one. And that’s when it began. LILLY MILMAN: I was actually also waiting tables full-time when I interned at Scout, and then I spent a few months freelancing with our previous editor, Reena. I think it’s really interesting that you (Ilan and Holli) created something that I later inherited. Could talk about your initial vision for Scout? ILAN: It’s important to credit Holli with with the initial vision and the launching. Holli is the entrepreneur behind it. Holli had the fortitude to stake her life on this at a time when—that was nine years after Inc. magazine was beginning to go online. To think that there would be a market for a print edition of a hyperlocal publication before everyone was using the compound adjective “hyperlocal...” But Holli had a sense had a sense that this would work. HOLLI: When I first started, I was staying with a friend and using her dining room as an office. For
the second issue, I got an office space and I actually lived in the back. I used a hot plate for the first three years. Luckily, there was a shower in there. It wasn’t supposed to be an apartment, but I think they were trying to rezone it so that it could be. Every night I was scared the police were going to come in and kick me out. … Those were the good old days. ILAN: Once I became the editor, I think the way that we collaboratively shaped it was that with me at the helm, it became more devoted to serious journalism. Adam (Vaccarro) and Tom (Nash) were serious reporters. We wrote stories that I think people really liked. They might have even, in retrospect, been too serious. But I think that what was important about what we did was that it showed people that this wasn’t going to be a pennysaver. There were going to be real stories about their communities. ADAM VACCARRO: We did a story on Assembly Square that was really thorough and fair and told a really definitive history of all the fits and starts to get it to what it became. Assembly is obviously thriving at this point, but it took a lot of work to get it there. It was useful for us as reporters to understand the history to how it got there and it added a lot of context of how it turned it into
Ilan Mochari
