Green: The Color of Hypocrisy

So here we are the end of Earth Week and the planet is still polluted and globally warmed. Publishers and advertisers alike have been filling our eyes and ears with their sudden strikes of earthly consciousness in an effort to appeal to those of us who sleep better at night knowing we support green brands. Vanity Fair did the green issue. So did Time. So did Elle. Even Black Enterprise joined the party.

But here’s the thing: I’m ok with lying to myself about my “sofa” commitment to saving our planet. I know that nodding in agreement to Al Gore’s face when I see it plastered on a billboard in Times Square isn’t really “doing anything” but it makes me feel better and frankly, lying to myself is a sharply-honed skill that I just can’t unlearn. I may not have a soul, but I do have a brain and I can tell when I’m being served tap water when I ordered bottled. Basically, I don’t like it when brands lie to me, especially brands that I’ve known and loved all my life.

The actual and physical environmental actions taken by consumer magazines is debatable; they’ll do things like claim they use a certain percentage of recycled paper in their pages and who am I to dispute that? If I had the ability to tell what percentage of a piece of paper was comprised of recycled materials, I wouldn’t be writing for a living. But this I do know: if a magazine is truly committed to this whole green thing, why not go digital for Earth Day? Isn’t that the only truly green option? Suggesting a publication to go digital for a month and sacrificing advertisers who might not be on board is asking a lot, but I don’t think it’s asking more than Vanity Fair is asking of me when it shoves environmental consciousness down my throat on any number of it’s hundreds of pages (recycled or not). If risking losing all those ad dollars for a month is just not feasible, then how about cutting pages in half in the name of the environment? All I’m saying is there are other options.

Personally, I find the brutal honesty in Vogue’s fall and spring fashion issues refreshing at this point. The arrogance of publishing issues that enormous and even listing the number of pages on the cover is simply awesome. Just sell me what I’m really buying and spare me the notion that you care if polar bears are getting uncomfortably warm in the Arctic Circle.

For a list of digital publications and to see how it all works, check out Nxtbook.

Also check out Zinio and Texterity, two other great digital media companies.