Green Magazines Get Blues : Environmental Publications Hurting From Falloff in Interest

They harbored dreams of spreading the green gospel.

Publishers rolled out new magazines like Buzzworm and Garbage that preached waste reduction, energy conservation, forest preservation.

But now the roughly half-dozen publications that sprang up around Earth Day’s 20th anniversary--four years ago this month--are falling about as fast as clear-cut trees.

Buzzworm is in bankruptcy. Garbage cut its frequency after barely breaking even. E magazine is living hand-to-mouth. Even entrenched magazines are hurting.

The shakeout is most profound in periodicals, but the trend suggests a falloff in environmental interest with implications beyond the publishing industry.

Despite the popularity of recycling and other initiatives, Americans in general--and magazine readers, in particular--are not as interested as environmentalists in green product updates and the latest dirt on polluters.

Moreover, they are reluctant to pay about $30 a year for magazines when much of the same fare is supplied by newspapers, news weeklies and television.

“I’m not sure there was a euphoria except by the publishers themselves,” publisher Joel Makower said. He should know.

Four years ago, Makower started the Green Consumer Letter, a monthly eight-page newsletter with information on green investing to energy conservation printed on recycled paper. He was forced to close it in January after subscriptions fell to a few thousand.

“I made the naive but rational-at-the-time assumption that there was going to be a good steady market for this,” Makower said.

What’s clear is that publishers overestimated the concern aroused by Earth Day fervor, the anti-regulatory policies of the Reagan decade and disasters such as the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.

A Roper Starch Worldwide poll finds that 20% of Americans felt strongly about the environment last year, down from 25% in 1991. Consumers most likely to spend more for green products fell from 11% in 1990 to 6% to 1993.

One reason is the economy’s sluggish emergence from the 1990-91 recession.

Readers are less likely to renew subscriptions to magazines not considered essential. Faced with a choice, Americans with only modest interest have turned to more conventional news sources that have expanded their green coverage.

Trend watchers expected the shakeout.

“Any time a new issue comes up on the radar screen, there tends to be an initial panic. Then we become more informed, people start to take action, address the problem, and people’s concerns become a bit muted,” said Bradford Fay, vice president at Roper Starch, the marketing and public opinion research firm.

“It’s not because the issue has gone away, it’s because progress is seen. The fact that we had a recession forced this sort of pragmatic thinking to move in quicker than it might have otherwise.”

The shift has converted enthusiasts to cynics. “I’m not 100% convinced environmental journalism is a mainstream consumer interest,” said a humbled Joseph Daniel, the publisher and founder of Buzzworm.

Launched six years ago, Buzzworm broke stories like pesticide spraying on airplanes and amused readers with irreverent pokes--including a parody of a poacher’s catalogue of endangered wildlife.

Circulation grew to 110,000 at its peak. Buzzworm was one of the few to claim success in luring big advertisers such as Chrysler and Absolut vodka.

Even with ads the bimonthly lost money, renewal drives were too expensive and readership fell.

Last fall, Buzzworm changed its name to Buzzworm’s Earth Journal to reflect a fresh emphasis on culture, eco-travel and literature, and halved frequency to four times a year.

But the publisher of Earth, an earth science magazine, sued Buzzworm over the new name as the company was trying to recapitalize its finances.

When the deal fell through, the legal expenses helped push the company over the edge. In December, Buzzworm sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Denver, nearly $2 million in debt.

Garbage magazine also is struggling for a profitable identity. Started in 1989 by the publisher of the Old House Journal, the bimonthly initially offered standard fare such as articles on composting and walking to work. Subscriptions grew to 125,000 by late 1990.

But amid disappointing renewals, Garbage grew more adversarial by challenging accepted environmentalist opinions on key subjects. One story questioned whether the ozone layer’s depletion was a serious problem. Garbage lost some angry readers in the process.

This year, Garbage underwent an even more fundamental shift. The publication halved its frequency to quarterly, dropped advertising and refocused on what it calls “environmental insiders”--readers like environmental activists, regulators and corporate executives.

“Time to Dump Plastics Recycling?” asks a story in the debut Spring 1994 issue. Another details Earth First! founder Dave Foreman’s plan for returning millions of North American acres to wilderness--and stresses that “eminent biologists back him.”

“What I’ve come to think is there’s really nothing such as a stand-alone environmental lifestyle,” said editor and publisher Patricia Poore, who also heads the Old House Journal. “It’s really an oxymoron--you can’t really live in the 20th Century and really be back to the land.”

You wouldn’t know it from E, a 5-year-old magazine steeped in environmental values. The February issue, for example, tells “the Dirty History of Nuclear Power” and how caffeinated environmentalists can choose “Coffees With Conscience.”

Despite its nonprofit status--foundation grants total up to 18% of its $1-million annual budget, with the rest from subscriptions--the monthly was forced recently to cut costs by slicing circulation one-third to 50,000.

“We’ve been pretty hand-to-mouth,” publisher Doug Moss said.

Even environmental groups that publish large-circulation magazines for their members are struggling. In 1991, Greenpeace closed its member magazine, no longer able to afford it.

Sierra magazine, published by the Sierra Club, has had limited success in luring big advertisers because of a predicament faced by all environmental magazines.

“We disseminate an anti-consumption message--travel less, consume less, pollute less,” said Jonathan F. King, editor in chief.

One hopeful area is in catering to businesses. Makower continues to publish his Green Business Letter--with advice on how to make companies greener--because an annual subscription commands at least $100 more than what he could charge readers for the consumer version.

“That isn’t a market that has been glutted by other media outlets,” he said.

Not yet, anyway. ECO (pronounced echo), which bills itself as a business magazine about the environment, debuted last fall with attacks on excessive and costly government regulation and an eclectic list of advertisers including Dupont, utilities and the World Wildlife Fund.

ECO envisions profitability by 1996. But other start-ups with similar themes may obstruct that plan.

“To repeat the same old thing, ‘Everybody is terrible and industry is awful,’ some of it has become old hat by now,” said ECO Editor and President Igor Gordevitch, former publisher of Geo and a variety of other magazines. “It’s a question of picking out who your readers are.”