Though OUT is said to have previously published at a loss, Henry Scott, president of OUT Publishing, Inc. recently praised Ms. Pettit at a party celebrating the magazine's selection of 1997's 100 most influential gay men and lesbians. By the end of 1997, it was said, the magazine expects to turn a profit for the first time.

Earlier this year, OUT, which claimed 150,000 visitors per month to its web site, killed its two-year old website magazine, citing major financial losses as the reason. Profitability became hopeless, even with such advertisers as Apple Computer, Clairol, and Nynex Corporation, according to Scott. The well-known web magazine's demise was also announced on the first page of The New York Times' business section and in Advertising Age.

According to Scott, advertisers were not clamoring, as was hoped, to advertise on the Web. It was necessary, in fact, to "beat them up" in order to encourage ad placements. The OUT Publishing president said that his site had lost between $50,000 and $100,000 annually since its inception. Bay Windows reported that OUT spokesperson, Ted Kruckel, put the figure at $200,000.

"Nobody is turning a profit," complained Scott at the time, "Publishers...didn't have clear goals when their sites were launched." When one does not have a clear goal, explained Scott, it becomes difficult to know if one is meeting one's goal.

Scott's firing of Sarah Pettit appears to be based on similar reasoning. He was quoted as saying that the magazine lacked focus. Other critics, including David Mulryan, president of the well-known advertising agency, Mulryan/Nash, also accused OUT of lacking vision. "The magazine did not have an edge," he said, suggesting that readers are best served by editors who take strong stands.

OUT's new editor is James Collard, previously the editor of Attitude, a British gay magazine. Ms. Pettit knew in November that OUT's president was planning to replace her. Her contract, due for renewal on February 28, became a point of dispute and she sought immediate legal advice. Asked to sign a termination document, she refused and was thereupon dismissed.

Ms. Pettit says she is contemplating a breach of contract lawsuit and is also considering charging the magazine with sex discrimination. Among her male supporters on the magazine was David Mendelsohn, a contributing writer who has tendered his resignation.

Mendelsohn told the New York Times, "I'm just totally flabbergasted. A founding editor has been unceremoniously thrown in the trash heap. This is not a bunch of people I care to be associated with."

Larry Kramer, author and anti-promiscuity activist, doubts, he says, that a female editor is capable of dealing with such matters as male promiscuity. Judy Weider, the female editor of The Advocate, responded to such patriarchal hubris by saying that if Pettit's ousting originated in such thinking that she was "appalled."

Scott denies that debates about promiscuity have had anything to do with Sarah Pettit's firing. He e-mailed Larry Kramer's supporters and said, "I hardly think the sex of an editor matters. Sarah Pettit has shown herself to be much more keenly aware of the issues facing gay men than any gay man I know."

"One of my concerns about OUT is it wasn't clear to me why OUT was essential to the people we have reading it," Scott said.

In her final year as editor in chief and vice president, Sarah Pettit saw OUT's advertising revenue increase by 8% through October, while its circulation jumped nearly 5% through June.