The Green Story Is Dead. Long Live the Green Story!

A handful of Chronicle reporters, including me, went to a conference for college public-relations managers in Baltimore last week. We were asked to offer tips about how to pitch The Chronicle, how we find and write our stories, what we’ll be looking for in the future, and so on. The college PR reps told us that “experts” in other sessions were advising them, Don’t bother pitching stories about green trends. That pitch is worthless, DOA.

As the reporter who spends some of his time writing about sustainability and “green” issues, I couldn’t help feeling a little hurt by that revelation. I’m going out of style?

But it makes sense—and, in a way, it’s good news for sustainability advocates. Journalism still depends on the “man bites dog” rule—unusual news makes the cut—and green stories are no longer unusual at colleges. It’s a sign of the success of the sustainability movement that most colleges have recycling programs, local-food ventures, energy-efficiency programs, and green buildings.

Yet, for the most part, the news industry also involves superficial interaction with the subjects of its stories. That seems especially true when it comes to sustainability issues. Sustainability is, after all, a complicated topic, one that looks at the connections and systems in energy, environment, society, economy, infrastructure, culture, and more. But news reporters labor under deadlines and therefore have short attention spans.

I got a call from a reporter in Minnesota recently, who asked me questions about environmental issues in college curricula. He hadn’t heard of the sustainability movement. Higher education was not his beat, so I wouldn’t have expected him to. Like most people, he equated “sustainability” with “environmentalism.” But when I started explaining the sustainability philosophy—the Venn diagram with the interlocking circles of economy, environment, and society—I could almost feel him losing interest.

Yes, the topic is perhaps a bit arcane, but no more so than higher-education finance or admissions. I don’t think the green story is dead, but it is evolving. The challenge for sustainability professionals, and the public-relations people who serve them, is to find ways to explain themselves, to not be afraid of talking about their failures, and to offer new angles on their successes.