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!

The Seattle Times is laying off about 10% of its staff, according to its competitor the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Not only is print ad revenue down, but online ad revenue is down as well. One editor at the paper told the bleak truth about the move:

Hopefully this will be enough to ensure the company’s survival.

I could do a whole blog chronicling what becomes of laid-off environmental beat reporters, but it’s more fun to talk to neat people like Lena Beth who roll up their sleeves and talk to people directly.  

California’s water woes are the stuff of legend, and environmentalist Mindy McIntyre (California Planning and Conservation League) and bureaucrat Lester Snow (California Department of Water Resources) square off this week in the Los Angeles Times, offering competing visions for how to providing enough clean water to balance the needs of families and wildlife in the state. Two things to keep in mind before I grade their work:

• The LA Times is losing readers and writers faster than the industry as a whole, so this worthy debate won’t have the influence on opinion it would have had five or ten years ago.
• Everyday citizens find these “he said she said” debates to be hard to follow. According to a 2005 Yale University study, more than half of Americans (53%) agree with this statement: “There is so much information and disagreement in the media that I don’t know who to believe about what is best for the environment.”

This second point means that the likely “winner” of this debate will be the one who states their case the most clearly to readers. Now the critiques:

Lester Snow: “Don’t be fooled by the rain — we’re in a water emergency.” C+

Snow uses only a few words that work: “investment” several times, “healthy” once, and “conservation” a few times. He could use a lot more: The whole piece is basically a call for Californians to work together, plan ahead, and… um… build more dams (not your humble blogger’s solution of choice).

Snow makes some word choice mistakes that environmental professionals often make: he uses “climate change” where he could use “global warming,” he uses “water quality” where he could use “clean water” or “enough clean water,” etc… Insisting on using professionally-correct lingo sucks some punch out of his piece.

But I think the biggest mistake Snow makes is structure his piece like a scientific paper: facts first, conclusions last. He should reverse that — Snow should make his point (”We need to work together, plan ahead, and build more dams”) before he provide the facts that prove his point (snowpack, global warming, delta smelt, cfs, hydrology, blah blah blah). As is, many readers will lose interest before he gets to the punchline.

Mindy McIntyre, “Old solutions won’t solve today’s crisis.” B-

McIntyre is also bit sparse with the words that work: “conservation” a few times, “nature” once, and “healthy” a couple of times. She could use a lot more: Her whole piece is basically a call for Californians to work together, plan ahead, and use the water they have more wisely (Your humble blogger prefers this approach).

I give McIntyre bonus points for a pararaph where she writes that some California fish species are facing extinction, rather than writing that they are “endangered.” The term “endangered” is polarizing — your friends love you more, your enemies fear and hate you more. But nobody likes extinction.

McIntyre’s big mistake is venture into economic arguments. She’s not a credible messenger on this point. And if Californians believe that more dams are the only or best way to keep the water flowing, they’ll say “to hell with what it costs.”

I declare McIntyre the winner by a nose here, though. This line is a killer:

We cannot rely on strategies from the past to solve the problems they created and address the water issues of the future.

If she’d opened her piece with this, she’d have knocked Snow out cold. As it is, McIntyre wins the first round but there’s more to come.

Hat tip to the fine Aquafornia blog for spotting the debate.

If you ever find yourself pondering the health of the environmental movement, take a few minutes to read this fascinating story that appeared in the Washington Post on Saturday about the changing face of the civil rights movement.

Reporter Daryl Fears reveals that big name organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Council are stagnant or declining. The problem: younger African-Americans respect the old guard but they are they are choosing to involve themselves in a wide variety of newer organizations. Among the challenges:

A proliferation of black organizations with niche audiences — lawyers, enginieers, accoutants, journalists — took away middle class members. 

And:

Today, radio deejays, Internet groups such as Color of Change.org and organizations such as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights are orchestrating bus rides, marches and other ations once performed by civil rights groups.

Has the same thing happened to the big names of the environmental movement? Would it be a bad thing if it did?

Click to read (free registration required): Civil Rights Groups Seeing Gradual End of Their Era