Check out these ads, which reveal a great deal about different attitudes that polluters and conservationists bring to the task of persuading the public.

Social research consistently find that corporations, especially those in the fossil fuel business, have a serious credibility gap with the public. So what do they do? They work hard to put the best face possible on their business — your face. Polluters create ads that use pictures and words to tell heartwarming stories that link their business to everyday citizens’ families and children. And then they get feedback from everyday citizens before they run them, just to make sure they got it right. Check out the faces in these two examples:

Source: EnergyTomorrow Coalition

Social research consistently finds that nature protection and pollution control experts enjoy pretty good credibility with everyday citizens on our business. So what do we do? We create cryptic, sterile ads that portray the environment as remote and impersonal. We skip the step of getting feedback everyday citizens and run the ads after our peers approve them. And then we wonder why ads like the one below don’t seem to make much difference in a public policy debate:

Bottom line here: Polluters do it better because they try harder. And that’s one of the reasons they can overcome their credibility gap and beat us on vital policy matters.

The Washington Post, which I read daily and blog about occasionally, just trimmed its newsroom with an aggressive buyout package. All week, familiar bylines have been signing off with farewell columns. On Sunday, it was radio critic and beat reporter Marc Fisher, who penned his final “The Listener” column. Back when my title was “press officer,” I read Marc’s column religiously. Even after I taught myself these new Internet tricks, I still kept up with his work.

Time was, Americans heard stories about nature protection and pollution control on the radio while commuting and running errands. As recently as 2001, they described it as one of their top five sources of environmental information.

Not so much anymore. In his signoff column, Fisher notes that many of those drivers today are listening to their iPods, satellite radio, HD radio, and talking on their phones. And radio advertisers have noticed. They’ve dialed back their spending, with the result that:

With the strong exception of public radio and a handful of all-news local stations… radio has largely gotten out of the news business — too expensive.”

But Fisher also notes that Americans are still listening to something as they go about their days. Those of you who are active in urban areas, where your neighbors spend a lot of time stuck in traffic and on subways, may find it worthwhile to explore traditional radio’s descendents: podcasts, text messages, and websites formatted to look good on the tiny screens of mobile phones.

But here’s the catch with that: the responsibilty for reaching your neighbors on the go is shifting to you. There are ever fewer radio journalists around to do the job for you, or to translate your shoptalk for the wider world. So learn some new tricks, and use those words that work, people!

And for you, Marc Fisher, thanks for years of great reading. Good luck with your new ventures.

That’s the headline of the day over at the Save New Jersey Parks blog, which is celebrating a recent NY Times investigative article criticizing New Jersey Governor Corzine’s draconian and short sighted effort to balance his budget on the back of the state’s natural areas and the people who care for and use them.

I’m sure the article will help — but not as much as it would have a decade ago. Like other newspapers around the country, the New York Times is hemoraging readers, advertisers, journalists… and clout. Park supporters around the state are waging a full blown campaign, with lobby days, public demonstrations, websites, letter writing campaigns, and more.

That’s the appropriate place for the groups to invest their efforts. These days a supportive newspaper article is a welcome development, but not the game changer it once was.

Over the past two weeks, I have been talking to a lot of people who want to do communications and marketing for nature protection and pollution control organizations. In these conversations, we wrestle with a challenge: Traditional news media is still dominant, and online social media is still nascent, yet all signs point to this reversing in not so distant future. So how do we get the word out about nature protection and pollution control today, and also acquire the skills we need to get the word out tomorrow?

This morning I came across some interesting research that suggests that blogging and other new media techniques are an effective way to get your message out to traditional news reporters. In 2007, TEKgroup International surveyed a bunch of reporters and found:

• 70% of journalists read at least one blog regularly 
• 25% of journalists read five or more blogs to keep on top of their beat
• 37% receive at least one regular RSS feeds
• 16% receive five or more RSS feeds

These numbers are higher than the adult popultation as a whole, and they will surely grow.

My takeaway from this study was that nature protection and pollution control can take up blogging and other new media activities with the expectation that journalists will cover their issue will be among the first to check out their work.

Try it, you might like it!