This past Tuesday evening President Obama gave his 2012 State of the Union Address. During his speech he touched on many hot button and important issues that resonate with American citizens and corporations alike, one of these being the environment.
Hello!
Welcome to GMT's monthly e-newsletter for June 2009. We send this e-newsletter on the first Monday of every month to share feature announcements, membership tips, links to recent articles from environmental reporters, new members, and other helpful resources.
I was listening to this Ted talk (clipped below) on design and this quote jumped out at me.
"Advertising is a price people pay for being unoriginal."
It raised questions for me about what would users tell their coworkers, friends and others they campaign about Green Media Toolshed. What do we want them to say? How are we original?
This looks interesting and useful for groups doing outreach on Katrina and environmental damage work. Also check www.scorecard.org
Link: GridSphere Portal
The GIS maps on this site depict demographic and infrastructural data as well as potential sources of environmental contamination and storm damage data in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
Dynamic GIS information will be found in the Aerial Imagery and GIS Data Layers application.
These pre-formatted maps are intended to support the environmental health community's efforts to address the uncertainty of risk of exposure to the contaminants entering the environment as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
This is simply the strongest indictment of environmental communication strategy I have seen. It is really time the groups and movement get serious about communications strategy, communications efforts and helping the public connect the dots.
From Greenwire:
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released earlier this week showed that 49 percent of respondents approved of the president's policies and 45 percent disapproved. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll last week placed his approval rate at 49 percent and 44 percent disapproving.
A separate Gallup poll released this week showed that only 31 percent of Americans believe the president improved the quality of the environment during his first term and only 39 percent believe he will do so during the second term.
The approval numbers in the Post-ABC and USA Today polls are higher than those given Bush on several other major issues, including the economy, the war in Iraq, Social Security, the budget deficit and immigration policy. Neither poll asked for the public's view on the administration's energy policy.
The polls come after four years in which Bush's environmental policies were repeatedly attacked by major conservation groups, and after a re-election campaign in which Bush's opponent, Democrat Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts described Bush as one of the most anti-environmental presidents in history.
Environmentalists say the poll data reflect the president's general level of support and, despite the millions of dollars environmental groups spent in the campaign, few Americans know much about the president's environmental policies.
If you are not looking at these reports you should. TRAC is doing amazing work teasing data from a huge database that exposes new and powerful stories for environmental groups.
In Alaska and the Mobile area in Alabama, Alabama South, the U.S. Attorneys chose to decline more than four out of five of the pollution matters.
In the areas around Los Angeles and St Louis, California Central and Missouri East, federal prosecutors declined less than half.
TRAC has written that future bulletins will zero in on such subjects as shifts in the administration-by-administration record concerning violators of the pollution or wildlife laws and an analysis of what happens to environmental matters once the investigative agencies have recommended that a prosecution be brought against a particular individual or business.
http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/environ/65
TRAC is also offering scholarships to a limited number of environmental groups that would like access to case-by-case information. For details call Paula Ben Gabr at 315 443-3563.
Download media_relations_manager.pdf
Here is the Job announcement for Media Manager at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington that focuses its analysis and research on a wide range of energy, environmental, and natural resource issues.
They are looking for an energetic and innovative person to manage a number of outreach activities to ensure that RFF research gets into the right hands and minds. The work will encompass traditional media relations, web-based placement, and close interaction with policy makers. Top-notch writing skills are essential, as well as solid, practical prior experience.
At the Bluevision Conference, I spent some time chatting with Shaw Thacher from Atlantic CoastWatch. They have a great service of free clippings for the environmental groups working on Coastal Issues along the Atlantic (North America to to Venezuela) I recommend river, sprawl, bay and ocean groups to get the clips. Shaw and the staff actually find key articles, surf the papers in small markets and kick out a newsletter of interesting stories.
They are in the middle of some changes but it is worth checking out (today).
At this time you should pull down the region, issue and last 30 days to get a feel for the huge amount of work these guys are doing collecting links to stories.
