Sign of the times: Tree Country goes digital
What began as a simple text-only email (which was sometimes faxed to external offices), the “bulletin,” as many still call it, has grown into a monthly mini-book of information about our agency. This month marks a 30-year milestone for the monthly bulletin, and this issue will be the last one laid out for print and distributed as a PDF document.
Tree Country: SC was originally a quarterly publication, the first issue of which Public Information Coordinator Michelle Johnson can find was from 1979. Field offices were responsible for sending in news and events from what were then seven districts; the resulting publication was a typed letter-sized publication on cream-colored paper. In 1989, Tree Country: SC went to a larger tabloid publication until it was decided in 1995 that our employees needed a more frequent newsletter than the quarterly publication. The first electronic issue was published Aug. 16 that year.
Retired Director of Technology Jeff Baumann and retired Director of Communications Jennie Morris came up with the idea of a weekly bulletin to share timely employee news. In those days the publication was shared via a UNISYS computer network, a predecessor to e-mail. The Information & Education (I&E) section would collect information, edit it and distribute it every Wednesday afternoon, so it was referred to as the “Wednesday bulletin.” Offices not on the UNISYS network received it via fax, from which it was shared with local employees.
In the beginning, the publication consisted of one or two pages of text; over time, it grew to include regular features from every division and section within the agency. Job postings and news from other offices were added later. Forty-six bulletins were issued the first year.
In August 1996, the bulletin was also sent via email to those employees had email addresses. As more employees obtained internet access and email, the last bulletin published via UNISYS was issued Aug. 5, 1998. From then on, the bulletin was issued as a Word document attached to email beginning in October that same year.
The Weekly News Bulletin, as it was called then, continued to grow, featuring all aspects of Commission news and events; everyone was encouraged to submit stories. Wardens and forest technicians, who did not have email at the time, began receiving the printed bulletin via the US Postal Service. The first photos included in the bulletin were sent as .jpg attachments Feb. 24, 1999; those two photos were of employees who came to work in the snow.
In December 2001, the collection and dissemination of bulletin news was fully turned over to Michelle Johnson. Full color headers and photographs became regular items in the publication.
In 2008, many changes came to the publication, which was previously produced in Word. At the time, Microsoft Publisher was a new program used to layout the news and photos into a more conventional newsletter style, then converted to a PDF that was emailed to all employees. The name was reverted to Tree Country SC. Fun facts, employee spotlights, and a dedicated history section were also added to make the bulletin more interesting.
Due to budget constraints, the bulletin was no longer mailed to employees. State Forester Gene Kodama became the first state forester to use the bulletin to address employees weekly in what became a regular front-page column. The bulletin gradually became a bi-weekly publication because of the amount of information that was included in its pages.
The bulletin received another major facelift in October 2014 when Director of Communications Doug Wood joined the agency and shortened the name to just Tree Country. The publication was created in Adobe InDesign with a more magazine-like look. Some new features – forestry-adjacent feature stories, inspirational quotes and more light-hearted fare – were added to the newsletter, which was put online as a PDF, a link to which was shared with all employees. In June 2015, the bulletin went to a (mostly) monthly publication, but with two double-month issues, one in the summer, the other over the holidays.
But the continued growth of Tree Country began to reach critical mass in successive years; all the extra content bogged down the editing process, and by Wood’s own admission, the publication became bloated and unwieldy. Communications Division staff decided in 2024 to convert the publication into a digital product that would resemble an online news site. Beam & Hinge, the company that redesigned the agency’s website in 2020, was contracted to build the news-style version of Tree Country, which was unveiled to Communications staff in early 2025. Several months of testing and tweaking have resulted in the online issue that is being published for the first time this month.
The other major change to Tree Country this month is its new editor, Public Information Coordinator Madeline Stewart. Madeline inherits production responsibilities from Michelle Johnson, who has admirably collected information for and designed almost every issue for the past 29 years. The bulletin was a labor of love for Michelle, who after drafting each issue would often make several rounds of edits based on feedback from multiple reviewers. “It has been such a pleasure to bring the Tree Country bulletin to you all these years,” Michelle said. “I hope this publication continues to grow, and as always, your input is greatly appreciated!”
Agency employees will still be notified when each new monthly issue is ready; the publication will live online, and successive issues will be archived for posterity.