Aloha to Scott Schumaker
Scott Schumaker, longtime HONOLULU publisher and president of aio Media Group, is trading in magazines for fishing poles and grill gear.
If you’ve picked up a copy of HONOLULU in the past 27 years, you’ve seen the name Scott Schumaker on the masthead—first as an advertising executive, then as the advertising director, then publisher. A few years after that promotion, Scott was named president of HONOLULU’s parent company, PacificBasin Communications (now known as aio Media Group). This is the first issue without him, and while that’s a great loss for us, we’re happy to congratulate him on his retirement after 40 years in the journalism industry.
Scott Schumaker. Photo: David Croxford
“Done right, grilled zucchini has a delicate, sweet flavor. It’s one of my favorite vegetables to do on the grill. I know that, technically, zucchini is a fruit, but, barbecue is not the right time to get into technicalities. So, let’s just agree to call it a vegefruitable.”
Some members of our staff weren’t even born when Scott started his career at Pacific Stars & Stripes in Tokyo. He moved to Honolulu a decade later, in 1995, taking a sales position at Trade Publishing for one year before moving over to Honolulu Publishing. Scott held the role of HONOLULU publisher from 2004 until he was named president in 2010, then again from 2020 until he announced his retirement at the end of 2022. He’s also served as publisher of other aio Media Group titles, including Mana Magazine and Hawai‘i Home + Remodeling.
Longtime readers may remember his honolulumagazine.com blog about Japan’s 2011 earthquake, which his wife, Yasue, experienced in Sendai. More recently, he shared his Fired Up Friday barbecue tips on hawaiihomemag.com, with such nuggets of wisdom as: “When it comes to cooking on the Coyote, if the bird is the word then the cow is the wow,” and “Done right, grilled zucchini has a delicate, sweet flavor. It’s one of my favorite vegetables to do on the grill. I know that, technically, zucchini is a fruit, but, barbecue is not the right time to get into technicalities. So, let’s just agree to call it a vegefruitable.”
If you’ve been to any of our events, you may have seen him mingling or, more likely, helping out wherever extra hands were needed. Scott was someone everyone could count on and he wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves to help take out trash, stuff goodie bags, pass out name tags and anything else anyone needed help with. And if you’re in the magazine world yourself, you may have gotten to know him at City and Regional Magazine Association events across the country. In February, Scott was presented with the prestigious CRMA Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be announced at the association’s annual conference in June. It will mark only the second time that the award is presented to a Hawai‘i publisher. It’s fitting and full circle that the former owner/publisher of HONOLULU Magazine, Dave Pellegrin, was the first publisher to receive this award.
You may still see Scott around town, at many of our events, playing pickleball, fishing, running marathons or taking long walks on the beach.
Mahalo, Scott, for all that you’ve done. Aloha and a hui hou!
