Wood Turner is editor and communications director for GoodThings.com, a Seattle media company focused on positive and constructive stories from nonprofits, companies, and communities.
Monday, 25 Jun 2001
SEATTLE, Wash.
Hi, I’m Wood Turner. As editor/publisher/researcher/communications director/web producer for an online magazine, I have a pretty serious relationship with my computer. So that’s where I’ll be this week, posting my diary entries from my trusty Dell in a fairly nondescript office building in downtown Seattle that happens to have a pretty astounding view of the Olympic Mountains. Around here at GoodThings.com, that view is by far one of our favorite “goodthings.” That view — and the vast and diverse ecology it contains — also reminds us everyday that refreshing, hopeful stories about often surprising, often uncommon constructive action on environmental issues are among the many “goodthings” our company is working to promote.
What exactly is a “goodthing”? That’s a question we never stop asking ourselves at GoodThings. It’s probably easiest to define by what it is not. It is not the result of a moral judgment. When we decide to write a story about something extraordinary that’s happening at a nonprofit or company somewhere in the world, we aren’t suggesting that one organization is exclusively a “goodthing” based on rigorous, objective criteria, while another, which may be doing something very similar or perhaps even more effectively, is not. We are on a continual quest to learn about innovative and constructive efforts going on in a number of different areas — the environment, volunteerism, human rights, international aid, diversity, community. The more “goodthings” we learn about, either through our own research or directly from the growing community of people worldwide who subscribe to our weekly e-zine, the GoodLetter, and visit our website, the better. Our goal has always been to define “goodthings” as inclusively as possible without compromising the values of our small, dedicated team. To us, calling something a “goodthing” by profiling it in a GoodThings story is not to say, “My goodthing is better than your goodthing,” or “If X is a goodthing, then Y must be a bad thing.” Quite the contrary. “GoodThings” is simply a name. It is by no means a prescription that dwells in the realm of absolutes.
I’m sure that, over the course of the week, I’ll continue to hammer this idea home, but it’s important to me that it be out in the open so that it’s clear to people where we’re coming from. We’re a positive company, even an optimistic company in a lot of ways, and in building what we call “a virtual front porch for people wanting to get together to share positive, constructive, creative ideas,” we are striving to connect people around the idea of making a difference without suggesting that “the sky is falling.” Sure, the world is a crazy, difficult, often ugly place in many, many ways, but it’s also made up of amazing, committed people doing remarkable things. It’s because of the presence of those real people that we don’t advocate a “corporations are evil” stance, or that a commitment to progressive ideals requires purity.
That’s why we’ll do a story on the efforts of employees at the headquarters of a multinational corporation to join together to provide nesting and breeding habitat for the endangered peregrine falcon. That’s why we’ll do a story on an unlikely environmentalist who — although he proudly rides a Harley-Davidson — has become profoundly dedicated to green building principles. We consider our brand of activism unique because we are attempting to communicate commonsense environmental information to an audience that may normally tune out typical “green” stories. It’s central to our philosophy that sustained change will require devising creative, compelling ways to communicate technical, progressive issues to the mainstream.
I think I’ll stop there today. It’s still early on Monday morning, and having an opportunity to put some of these thoughts down in writing helps me start the week with a little perspective. Publishing a weekly magazine creates a frenetic pace around here. This week, I’m working on a story about an incredible energy-related program being implemented by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a groundbreaking nonprofit with roots in Chicago. Stay tuned! It’ll be the central story in the GoodLetter this Thursday night. That’s all for now.
Tuesday, 26 Jun 2001
SEATTLE, Wash.
Hi again. It’s another beautiful summer day in the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday I mentioned the daily inspiration I get from seeing the Olympic Mountains from my office window in downtown Seattle. Today, I caught a glimpse of another environmental icon that has a way of keeping me going. As I biked to work this morning along Lake Washington, I saw the early morning shimmer of sunlight on snow-covered Mt. Baker, a 12,000-foot peak a couple of hours north of Seattle, just shy of the Canadian border. It has a way of greeting the day with such grace. Probably a good goal for all of us.
Today, I’m working on a number of GoodThings stories, most of which will likely appear in the GoodLetter, our weekly subscription e-zine, over the course of the summer. It really is the best thing about my job. I love being able to connect with people all over the world who are making a difference. While personally gratifying, these are often thankless jobs for folks. They toil in anonymity, motivated by the small results they achieve in helping individual people or communities improve their futures. And that’s where I get to come in. I get to connect with these people to help them tell their stories. At GoodThings, we are determined to increase exposure for “goodthings” that are happening everywhere.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m working on a piece for this week’s GoodLetter on an innovative energy program being implemented by the Community Energy Cooperative and its parent organization, the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Although it now has offices nationwide, the CNT got its start in Chicago over two decades ago by helping people in the city’s neighborhoods become connected to a sense of ecology and an understanding of sustainability. One of its earliest programs was to advocate increased commercial and residential development around transit stations throughout the city as a way to both encourage investment in less-advantaged neighborhoods and maximize the use of transit for environmental reasons. It’s an organization that prides itself on demonstrating the economic value of sound environmental decision-making. We are doing our story on a CNT program now in place in three Chicago neighborhoods that allows residents to trade-in — for a nominal fee — inefficient window air-conditioning units for brand-new, high-efficiency models.
The CNT has worked closely with Commonwealth Edison (the local electric utility), the city, and even appliance manufacturers to make this program a reality. The reduced demand on the city’s power supply has obvious environmental benefits. But the program also helps to improve the quality of life in disadvantaged parts of Chicago — clearly, a good thing! I’m really excited about this story and loved being able to speak yesterday with the organization’s dedicated neighborhood representatives. In so many ways, the project is what we’re all about. We want the CNT
to be something everyone knows about, not just a regional effort. If our stories help do that in a small way, we have done our jobs.
I’m running out the door in a few minutes to meet with someone from the Songbird Foundation, an organization that advocates the commercial and personal use of shade-grown coffee as a way to save tropical forests that provide critical habitat for songbirds. I love the way this organization connects environmental purpose with people’s passions. Certainly, there are many organizations that have worked on tropical forest conservation, many of which do phenomenal work. What makes the Songbird Foundation a different kind of forest conservation organization is that they’ve focused their efforts on things people can clearly understand — coffee and birds. People who care about coffee and people who care about rare birds are dedicated people with passions that attract many new people all the time. Getting these people focused on what forest conservation means for their passions is what GoodThings is all about. It’s the idea that runs around in my head in the middle of every conversation I have. I think I’ll chew on it some more in-between (and during!) meetings today. See you tomorrow.
Wednesday, 27 Jun 2001
SEATTLE, Wash.
I woke up to a typical (or should I say stereotypical?) Seattle day. The sky is gray and the clouds seem to have a slow leak. Nothing quite like Seattle’s signature drizzle. To say that the rain is much-needed would be an understatement. The winter here was unseasonably dry, and we’re facing a drought this summer. It’s amazing how refreshing the rain can be.
My meeting yesterday with the Songbird Foundation was interesting, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to develop a story on the organization’s work for the GoodLetter (our weekly newsletter) sometime soon. Songbird is a nonprofit organization that’s working on tropical forest conservation issues by promoting shade-grown coffee. In many parts of Central and South America, as well as in Africa and Southeast Asia, the drive to grow coffee faster to meet North American and European demand has resulted in significant deforestation. The great thing — or the “goodthing,” if you will — about Songbird’s approach to the issue is that rather than try to build a constituency on the basis of the catastrophic nature of the problem, it attempts to connect with people’s passions for coffee and rare songbirds to get them focused on deforestation.
Bonnie Raitt and Keb’ Mo’ at the Seattle benefit.
Photo: Songbird Foundation.
Some might cynically call this a smoke-and-mirrors approach. To me, it’s just plain savvy. Clearly, not everyone wears his commitment to causes on his sleeve. Maybe a better analogy might be bumper stickers or T-shirts: Not everyone finds it easy to tell the world in explicit terms what they stand for. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are part of the problem. I am glad there are people who will join a protest or demonstration at a moment’s notice, but I don’t think they are the only ones who can effect change. Some people choose to be activists in different, more private ways. We at GoodThings think that if we can connect with those types of people, we’ve gone a long way toward broadening the activist base. Organizations like Songbird seem to see it the same way. Songbird staged a sold-out benefit concert in Seattle recently, featuring the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Keb’ Mo’. Sure, lots of folks came to the concert simply for a chance to see some of their favorite artists. And maybe lots of those folks weren’t motivated by environmental concerns, or had no idea what the significance of a shade-grown coffee campaign might be. But maybe, by trying to reach them via a forum and format that appealed to their own passions, Songbird drew a few more people into the fold. I certainly like to think so.
I also spoke with the folks at Milkweed Editions yesterday. Milkweed is an amazing nonprofit publishing house that focuses on works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that have an environmental bent. Most recently, Milkweed published Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony, a collection of essays by some of today’s most well-known environmental writers — Rick Bass, Barry Lopez, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams — about the ongoing debate over oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge. These are not predictable environmental sermons but instead are balanced, beautiful pieces. Milkweed has also published Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray (about finding nature in some of the most unlikely places) and The Prairie in Her Eyes by Ann Daum (about one woman’s efforts to reconcile ecology with family tradition on the Dakota plains), among many other books. In some ways, I feel like Milkweed is doing with literature what Songbird is doing with music. As Milkweed’s Elizabeth Cooper told me, “Reading and the exchange of ideas is a kind of activism that’s attainable. You can get involved in an issue while sitting at home reading.” I couldn’t agree more. Readers may not necessarily be waving banners, but they may very well be moved to write to decision-makers. This is a kind of activism that can change the world. Remember Silent Spring?
Time to write this week’s book and music reviews for GoodThings. (We review music, books, and films every week in the Good Gravy section of our website.) It’s also time to finish up that Center for Neighborhood Technology piece for the GoodLetter that I keep talking about! See you tomorrow.
Thursday, 28 Jun 2001
SEATTLE, Wash.
For three days, I’ve written about publishing the GoodLetter (the GoodThings weekly e-zine), but now it’s time to make good (no pun intended). By 6 p.m. PDT, we’ll have published our 43rd edition. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for 43 weeks. I look forward to the next 43 and hope we’ll be reaching twice as many people around the world by then.
Today should look a lot like most Thursdays for me. They’re almost invariably days without meetings, and they have a nonstop pace. I’ll first update the GoodThings Weblog, a feature of our home page that we call “Good Grabs.” It changes every day. Basically, we scan print and online media for our favorite positive stories of the day. Today, we’re including a story about a software program called FightAids@Home that makes the unused processing cycles of your home or work computer available to the Scripps Research Institute’s ongoing efforts to combat AIDS. It does this without affecting the performance of your computer in any way. As it stands, the funding realities for AIDS research are such that most laboratories don’t have enough computing might to process all of the necessary modeling efficiently. The FightAids@Home software builds a network of people around the world doing good from their desktops simply by having their computers on. When you consider the demand that millions of humming computers and monit
ors — many of them underused — places on our energy supplies, it makes even more sense to participate in this very good and important cause. Definitely a “good grab.” The “Good Grabs” feature is a way for us to highlight good things that are happening in brief, easy-to-digest ways — and we love it when our readers suggest stories or ideas to us.
The Picton Castle. Good photo!
Next, I’ll update our “Good Photo” feature. We use the photo — which also changes every week — as a way to provide readers with a visual, and hopefully beautiful, connection to a constructive program that’s happening somewhere. A few weeks ago, a reader wrote to us about a nonprofit organization called WorldWise. Representatives from WorldWise are currently sailing aboard the tall ship Picton Castle, a training boat for would-be ocean sailors. WorldWise is using much of the ship’s cargo space to transport 20 tons of school supplies, building supplies, clothes, pencils, pens, computers, tires, and National Geographic maps to children — many of them with special needs — in ports all over the world. The organization spearheaded a grassroots effort to collect the supplies in a number of U.S. cities. The Picton Castle is currently somewhere in the South Pacific. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been featuring scenes from the voyage — and WorldWise’s work — on our home page in preparation for a larger feature story that will appear in the GoodLetter later this summer. Like many of the things we try to highlight, it’s a commonsense example of people and organizations making connections in order to make a difference.
After getting today’s Good Photo ready, I’ll put together another of our weekly features, “GoodThings on Public Radio.” We recognize that, while many of our readers would like to be able to get all that public radio has to offer, for most of them, it’s just not possible. So every week, we scan the content of the news shows on public radio and select a Magnificent 7, if you will, of our favorite public radio stories from the week (one from each day). We tend to focus on the stories that profile the extraordinary actions of individuals or organizations. We also have a soft spot for the human-interest stories that illustrate the different ways people are finding meaning in their lives. Like the “Good Grabs” feature, we encourage our readers to tell us their favorite public radio stories from the week. I should emphasize that the active participation of a broad community of people is what makes an effort like GoodThings so gratifying.
This is going on a little longer than I had intended — I need to go ahead and wrap this up today so I can finish up this week’s lead story for the GoodLetter (which, unlike everything else I’ve described in this diary entry, is on an environmental topic!) and get everything — the lead story, reader letters, this week’s photo, the public radio pieces, our music, movie, and film reviews — posted to our website. That’s the story of my Thursday. Have a great day.
Friday, 29 Jun 2001
SEATTLE, Wash.
Well, our trusty e-zine, the GoodLetter went out on schedule last night, featuring a lead story on the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Community Energy Cooperative. There always seem to be glitches with Internet publishing that somehow love to rear their ugly heads right around deadline time. Last night, I had a few rough spots, but I think we survived okay. I feel as if I’m forever talking to other writers and editors who rely heavily on the Internet and who spend an inordinate amount of time digging out of technological snafus. I think it will always be the story of our lives.
Friday is always an interesting and exciting day because it’s postpublication. Who will we hear from? Will we connect with anyone new? Will our subscribers be so inspired by what they read that they either change the way they think about their lives and how they relate to a particular issue or forward the GoodLetter to a group of their friends who might also be interested in our stories? Will we get an indication of people’s excitement about the GoodLetter by the number of folks who contribute “favorite goodthings” (one of the features of our home page and our site)? Will readers be motivated to share their own relevant stories pertaining to one of the topics we’ve covered? Fridays are always days of anticipation. It’s our chance to connect with the people who make what we do possible.
Friday is also our day to step back from our production schedule and try to understand our readers better. Every week, we get a wide variety of email, all of which we work hard to respond to personally. Many of the letters we receive turn into story ideas. My inbox full of messages is just staring at me this morning (they’re distracting me from this final diary entry!). I’ve begun some amazing correspondence with readers that makes being in my role at GoodThings as much of a learning experience as I hope it is to be a reader. It’s also helped to remind me how small the world is and that people who care about progressive change in the world are everywhere. Despite the struggling of Internet-based communities these days (and despite the regular bumps and bruises of Internet publishing that I mentioned before), I remain hopeful that the web will continue to enable us to connect around issues and ideas in ways that we couldn’t imagine 10 years ago and won’t be able to fathom into the future.
So my week winds down. I’m developing a number of interesting pieces for publication this summer. We’ve got a piece on the slow-food movement. We’ve got a story coming up on an intensive documentary-filmmaking school for teenagers. We’re telling the story of Powerful Voices, a nonprofit that provides educational opportunities and mentoring for girls in juvenile detention and as an after-school program. I’ve mentioned the upcoming environmental piece on the work of the Songbird Foundation, as well as the story of WorldWise, a nonprofit that’s delivering school supplies — by sea — to needy children around the world. And there are many more. What are your ideas for GoodThings? I’d love to hear from you.
I forgot to mention that Friday is also a time that I drown in “Good Gravy” (that’s what we call our weekly music, book, and film reviews section). Giving people recommendations of refreshing, surprising diversions that they might not otherwise hear about is the icing on the cake that is my job at GoodThings. I think I’ll put on one of the CDs we’ve reviewed recently, respond to some letters from readers, and see where the day takes me. Thanks for reading this week. Come see us.
