I was asked the other day about how I was enjoying my conversion from Boy Scout executive to journalist.

For those of you who haven’t been following my career over the years, I joined the Transcript-Bulletin in 2007 after 20 years with the Boy Scouts of America, working as a district executive.

While I enjoyed working for the Scouts, journalism has also proved to be very rewarding. The two jobs are different but also involve some similar skill sets.

First you have to understand what a professional Boy Scout does for a living. To many, the job title conjures up pictures of a frazzled adult in khaki shorts trying to lead a rag-tag group of boys on outdoor outings while completing merit badges and repeating the Scout Oath from memory.

None of that is true.

As a district executive, I spent very little time working directly with youth. My job was to recruit, train and support quality adult leaders that in turn delivered a quality Scouting program to youth.

Yes, I used the word “quality” twice in that sentence for emphasis. Quality is important to the Scouting movement, just as it is to journalism. Regardless of the cynical eye the public often casts toward the media these days, we Transcript journalists do strive to bring you not just a newspaper, but quality journalism that features everything from breaking news to great feature stories about the people and places in our community.

As a professional Scouter, I often worked with the same community leaders that I now use as contacts and sources for news.

A couple weeks ago, when I went to interview Heritage West Credit Union CEO Bruce Bryan, we sat and recalled our Scouting days together. Bryan was our district finance chairman and was responsible for helping us raise money. But this time I was visiting him to write about his plans for the credit union since taking over the top job there.

That is one thing I enjoyed about Scouting: getting to know and work with the best of the best in the community. Some of these were elected officials or heads of corporations, while others were the types of folks described as salt of the earth. Plain ordinary folks that dedicated a portion of not only their time, but their lives, to a movement whose mission they believed in.

As a journalist, I get the opportunity to do the same. Just yesterday afternoon I spent three hours with a delegation of six people from Russia, discussing everything from what they eat to the influence of the Russian government on their media.

Then I get to write a story so you can learn what I learned.

As a professional Scouter, I also found myself often on the other end of the news chain. Instead of writing stories, I was trying to make news.

The first two councils I worked in were very small and I had the staff assignment for public relations, which made me the editor of our in-house newsletter. I learned about writing, editing and layout. I remember loading Adobe PageMaker version 1.1 onto the computer at our office and teaching myself how to use it to lay out the paper. I also learned a few fascinating things like why a 12-page newsletter was cheaper to print than an eight-page newsletter.

I developed our public relations plan. I wrote press releases, worked with reporters and tried to get the positive things Scouting was doing in the news. The idea was to make what we were doing sound like it was changing the world.

Now I receive those press releases, phone calls and e-mails and either turn them into stories or explain why they’re not newsworthy.

In Scouting we had a lot of meetings and deadlines. There were deadlines for Friends of Scouting, achieving membership goals, camp reports and more.

We had so many meetings, somebody once asked what I did for a living and I said, “I get paid to go to meetings.”

In journalism we have fewer meetings but more deadlines — almost daily.

At least when I go to a meeting in the evening now, I don’t have to stay until the last person has left so I can lock up the building and turn the lights out. When city council meeting is over, I get to go home.

After 20 years, do I miss Scouting? A little less each year. And Scouting seems to be doing just fine without me.

I really enjoy this niche as a journalist. As with Scouting, I feel like I am doing something for my community.

I have found that most people have a desire to feel like they are doing something to leave the world a little better than they found it. Some volunteer, some run for office, some quietly render service to others. And some are lucky to do these things for a living.

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com