Part of the reason for the light blogging: Yesterday I was part of a panel titled “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change,” organized by Green L.A. and Liberty Hill Foundation.

Intended for an audience made up primarily of local enviro and social change orgs, the panel drew people from Heal the Bay, Coalition for Clean Air, Santa Monica Baykeeper, and the like.

Pre-event, we (the panelists) were told we’d be given 4 minutes “to lay out [our] thinking on how advocacy groups can best build relationships with internet reporters, editors and bloggers. Concrete illustrations are especially welcome.” However, the actual event ended up being much more loosely organized.

For one, Margot Roosevelt replaced Tami Abdollah to represent LA Times’ new enviro blog Greenspace — and Margot had to leave early. So she kicked off the panel by saying little about blogging but instead emphasizing that the LA Times won’t survive unless all of us buy the print version of the paper.

Hmmm…. I’d like the LAT to survive, but I’m pretty happy reading it online — and just don’t think readers’ll be reverting back to the 90s anytime soon.

Still, what came across for me during the panel is that many of the audience members — like Margot — were relatively unfamiliar with new media (few had even heard of Greenspace) and / or the perspectives or potential benefits coverage in these mediums could provide for enviro and social change orgs. Thus, the Qs from the audience tended to focus on stuff like whether new media coverage could actually incite bigger changes, how many eyeballs blogs attract (and how to find out this info), etc. as opposed to actual tips and advice on working with the new media.

Because of this, I started to wonder if much of what the panelists said even made sense to the audience members, who may or may not have known even what a blog reader or rss feed is, let alone Twitter or the Causes application on Facebook….

Perhaps due to the lack of structure, the discussion sometimes rambled and went off topic. Much of the panel focused on advice not specific to the web medium, i.e. targeting your news pitch to publications / people who may actually be interested in it. Some of the convo went over to how to write better blogs — advice more useful to the panelists than to the audience members.

In any case: I think Zuade Kaufman of truthdig and I were the only people who actually prepped said 4-min speeches — or at least the only ones who insisted on getting ‘em in at random points during the event :P

I hope the attendees got something out of the discussion. For my part, I’ll put up my notes — along with a couple additional resources for enviro and social change orgs — in the next post. Feel free to critique it — or ask additional questions, which I’ll try to circulate to the other panelists too.

Most notable distraction of the event: The styrofoam cups on the panelists’ table.

I’d like to note for the record that I did not take, nor use, a styrofoam cup — one was just set down before me. In the Q&A section, Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, noted his disapproval of said cups before asking his question. I agree with the disapproval, but can’t resist pointing out the fact that Heal the Bay gave out disposable plastic bottles in each and every shwag bag at its last fundraiser dinner….

Overall, I enjoyed being part of the panel — especially meeting people from the many enviro orgs in LA. I just hope the audience got as much out of it as I did. Thanks to Green L.A. for including me –

Update: My notes are up!

Photo by maxgladwell

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