Christopher Keyes: Outside magazine
When Christopher Keyes, 34, took over the pages of Outside magazine in April 2006, he became just the fourth (and odds are youngest) editor in the publication’s 30-year history. And along the way, he inherited over 2 million monthly readers ranging from rock jocks and surfers to environmental activists and adventure travelers alike (or multiple machinations there of). Outside dedicates itself to covering “the people, activities, gear, literature, art, and politics of the outside world”—a tall order for any one publication. But Outside has demonstrated its chops over the years, it being the only magazine to receive three consecutive National Magazine Awards for General Excellence, among many other accolades (and more than a little ribbing from eco-purists).
In April 2007, Outside published its special Green issue, splashing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on their cover. Other “green heroes” profiled included David De Rothschild, founder of Adventure Travel, and Summer Rayne Oakes, model and environmentalist. A major, long-form journalism piece considered how activists are looking to tackle green issues in red China.
Keyes comes to his new role at Outside after roles as editorial director at Texas Monthly, articles editor at Skiing Magazine, and associate editor at Outside itself. Keyes earned his B.A. in environmental science policy at Duke University in 1996 before interning with The Bear Deluxe Magazine and then Outside.
A former contributing writer for The Bear Deluxe Magazine, Keyes penned a humorous exposé on a Klingon Conference in Moscow, Idaho, for the special science fiction issue (issue number ??, year), and co-wrote and -edited parallel interviews with Makah tribal leaders and Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society regarding then-contentious whaling-rights issues in northern Washington.
Current Bear Deluxe editor Tom Webb spoke with Keyes this spring via phone from his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

CK I love that you’re still at it with The Bear Deluxe. It’s such a cool publication.
TW Yeah, it’s been an interesting ride. It’s been a long haul with a lot of ups and downs.

CK I follow it all the time, and sometimes you see issues coming out regularly, and then you don’t see one for a while. I can only imagine just getting the funding straightened out is tough.
TW Well, so many positive things have been happening with it that we’ve stuck with it, and now I think it’s really paying off in a lot of ways. Hopefully we can continue with some of the momentum that we have. A lot of what we are able to do is through the power of interns, and so I wanted to start by asking you, how would you say that your intern experience informed your later work?

CK First of all, it was an amazing experience. I was at an age and an experience level where I couldn’t get any work doing what I wanted to be doing eventually, which was long-form journalism. At the internship at The Bear Deluxe, you just get this full freedom. If you want to interview somebody, go interview them. You sent me up to a sci-fi convention in Moscow, Idaho, which was basically my first magazine assignment. It’s a little painful to look back at the piece itself. I learned so much just going through that process and being given the freedom to go for it, whereas I think the traditional route in journalism is that you work your way up within one publication, and it’s very hard to get those kinds of experiences.
TW I had forgotten about the sci-fi thing. I remember mostly the interview with the Makahs and Paul Watson.

CK Paul Watson, exactly, in our magazine a couple months ago, and the big story in National Geographic Adventure, so he’s still in the news. It was neat to have done that right when I got my start.
TW Absolutely. Your experiences at Texas Monthly and Skiing: What have you brought from those experiences coming back to Outside?

CK Well, more than anything, I had an incredible mentor at Texas Monthly. Before I went there I knew very little about the publication; I just knew that it had a great reputation. As you can imagine from the title, there’s not a ton of readership outside of Texas. But you go there, and you realize how vital it is within the state, and especially having a Texan in the White House and many other Texans there, vital nationally while I was there. I worked for a really inspiring guy who was sort of obsessed with politics, so I got to learn a lot about political writing but also how to balance the commercial needs of a magazine with the journalistic need to stay vital as a publication. You have to serve both masters, I guess. And that’s something that I particularly learned. I mean, he used to talk about, and I talk to my staff about here, that it’s a little bit like a Hollywood actor where you do one for the studio and one for yourself. And when we build an issue here, we know it’s going to have big, hard-hitting domesticated journalism, long-form journalism, but that doesn’t always sell the magazine. You know, we have to do that as a commercial entity.
TW You were at Outside before, and then you came back. Would you say you’re bringing any new perspective, are you setting any new goals for the magazine, or do you think you are going to continue with its traditional route?

CK I think it’s a combination. It’s very rare, in this day and age especially: I’m the fourth editor of Outside, and we’re celebrating our 30th year. That’s a remarkable run of continuity for a publication, and especially a publication our size. So I’m pretty aware of the rich legacy that I have to uphold now that I’m taking over. Certainly, when I applied for this job, and when I go out and talk about the magazine, I say there’s nothing terribly broken that I want to fix or correct. The magazine that I fell in love with is the magazine that I want to keep going. And I think the best legacy that we’ve got is what I was talking about, our long-form journalism, our great history of bringing new voices, young voices to the national level, whether it’s Jon Krakauer, Tim Cahill—these guys that get started in the pages of Outside. So that’s something that I definitely want to continue. But in terms of bringing a new vision, one thing that’s very important to me is to sort of bring back Outside’s environmental voice. We’ve had a lot of discussions as soon as I got on board here on how we could do that. I don’t know what your sense is, but I feel like, obviously, that green issues have certainly hit mainstream again, but one thing that’s really been a help is that the movement is starting to tap into a lifestyle choice as opposed to just, from a journalism standpoint, hey, you need to know about this horribly raped landscape in West Virginia where they’re building a coal mine. People have been inundated by those really tough, depressing stories for decades, and to some degree I think became immune to them and didn’t want to read those stories anymore. Whereas they do want to read about things that they can do, they want to read about maverick scientists who are coming up with some of the solutions, ways that they can invest their money that might support green causes, those sorts of things. Those kinds of stories are something that we’re really trying to bring to the magazine.
TW A couple of the features that I looked back on this year that really caught my attention were international stories—the one on the Philippines, and then the two guys who lived in Baghdad. They weren’t necessarily traditional environmental stories per se, but they were finding that crossover to other cultural and political concerns. Is that something that we’ll see more of, or were those a little bit of a departure for Outside?

CK Yeah, we think of Outside as representing this lifestyle, not necessarily just about outdoor sports, not about just environmentalism. It’s this broad canvas that we like to paint on called “the active outdoor lifestyle.” Part and parcel of that is adventure, and both of those stories, while certainly not traditional travel stories, they represented a real adventure travel element to me. That’s why they belonged in our pages. There are certain criteria a story has to make to be in the pages of Outside. First and foremost, it just has to be a very intriguing story, both of which those are. Then you justify them being in the pages of the magazine, like I said, because they’re adventure stories.
TW Let’s talk a little bit about this Mount Hood story that you just did recently. I thought that was really fascinating, because here in Portland we knew it was getting national attention, but I’m not sure we knew the kind of media frenzy that was going on. Can you speak briefly about Outside’s perspective about how that was covered and this idea of “alpine rubbernecking”? I thought that was a great term.

CK [Laughs] That’s interesting to me, because I was actually home for the holidays at the time, so I was in Portland visiting with my family while that was going on as well. So I didn’t have a sense of it—again, like you, I knew it was being covered nationally, but I didn’t get a sense because we were also seeing it on the local news and seeing that kind of coverage. So when I got back to Santa Fe, and started to be aware of how big it was, I brought in some editors and said, “How are we going to cover this story?” Immediately there was this kind of consensus around the table of the viewpoint that we share, which is that the media are just making too big of a deal over what is a terrible tragedy, but now they’re starting to question our right to be outside, to have these adventures. A couple days later, Mike Roberts, who is our executive editor and actually our one editor in New York City, was called to be on the O’Reilly show. I was biting my nails, nervous because you never know what’s going to happen with O’Reilly. But he just started purporting these ridiculous ideas about how we needed to limit people’s right to go into the backcountry in the winter, the most dangerous time. Suddenly, for a guy who considers himself a Libertarian, we have somebody who is proposing that there be government intervention in what we can do outside. Seeing how this was being played on O’Reilly and various other media outlets, this magazine wanted to take a stand and give an opinion.
TW I thought it was great how you brought up the whole “adventure as a First Amendment right” concept.

CK [Laughs] That’s part of the timing of being a monthly publication. If we were a weekly, for whatever reason, we might not have had the opportunity to look at this thing from 30,000 feet and say, “What do we think about this?” instead of just reacting like a normal daily or weekly would cover that story.
TW How would you describe the decision-making process there? It sounds pretty collaborative, or are you the final say on the main stories? And to that end, how did you all decide to put Arnold on your cover of the green issue?

CK To the first part of the question, I’d like to think we have a very collaborative process here. I was incredibly fortunate that when I got here, there was a powerhouse staff already in place. I’m very fortunate to have a deputy editor, Mary Turner, who’s got the experience of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker; Alex Heard, the editorial director, has got Wired and The New York Times Magazine; Elizabeth Turner, who has been our literary editor for a long time. All these people are just phenomenal editors, have great experience at Outside already, know the magazine instantly. So to be able to collaborate with them, I am extremely fortunate. So what we try to do and what I try to do is, everybody, no matter where you are on the masthead, it is incredibly important that you’re bringing ideas to the table, and story ideas. So we meet once a month, like a lot of magazines, and we pore over dozens sometimes—sometimes more, sometimes less—but dozens of story ideas, and we just pluck the best and start to put an issue together, trying to create a nice mix of stories. We can’t have a whole bunch of travel stories, we can’t have all hard-hitting stories, we can’t have all surface journalism in one issue; we just try to pluck the best of them. A smaller group of us will meet together and then put together an issue that way. As far as Arnold goes, we started with a list of probably a dozen people we wanted to think about for the cover of the magazine, everything from the incredibly obvious Al Gore to Leo DiCaprio who was just on Vanity Fair’s green issue, to a lot of the names you would expect to see on a list like that. It just so happened at the time we were doing the planning for this stuff, Schwarzenegger did his state of the state address. I guess it was early January, and he really just came out again. After signing his emissions statements in the early fall, he came out again. The election was over, and it was clear that he wasn’t finished with his environmental agenda. I thought that was really inspiring for a couple of reasons. One, here was a man who many might accuse of pandering to the environmental movement, but clearly the election was over and he still had this high up on his agenda. And two, it was a pretty good indication that—here was a Republican candidate from the biggest state in our country who that moment had his political fortunes changed, embracing environmentalism and not doubting the reality of global warming. To me, that’s pretty inspiring whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, just to see how much influence that has on your political career. Because—and I know I don’t have to tell you this—it’s three or four presidential election cycles where environment hasn’t even reached the top five of the issues that they’re talking about.
It will be interesting to see where there’s a lot of big talk now, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the next presidential election cycle in the fall, will global warming still be in the mix of topics being discussed? I certainly hope it is, but we’ve seen enough to see where it gets pushed into the background, that’s for sure.
TW To change the subject a little, what are you guys seeing as the next wave in adventure sports? And is kickball on your editorial horizon?

CK [Laughs] I have actually seen a kickball story idea since I’ve gotten here, but it’s quite far from publication. It’s interesting because we’re at a time now where it’s easy to feel like everything’s been done. Everything’s been done, and every place has been visited, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there’s just so much emphasis on the record, whether it’s the seven summits, or climbing all 14 8,000-meter peaks, or the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth. In some ways these records that are kept are somewhat ridiculous, but at the same time they show human creativity and the levels that people will go to get a first and to push what humans have done before. And that’s what we’re seeing a lot, is more and more people rather than saying “I’m climbing Mount Everest” or “I’m climbing all 14 8,000-meter peaks,” plus I mountain-biked to the base camps for each of them. What we’re seeing is kind of this combination of sports—that’s where adventure is going. And then the other frontier, of course, is space. Just in our back yard here, down south in New Mexico, Richard Grahams is putting together the world’s first privately run space port. And if it really gets off the ground, I think if we’re talking about adventure sports, that would certainly be the next leap.
TW Well, keep an eye out for kickball in Portland. It’s everything Portland.

CK Do they have leagues?
TW Yep, remember, you all put Portland on your cover recently.

CK Actually, we do a Best Town issue every year, and it’s like crack cocaine on the newsstand. I think people just love to read about other places they want to live. It’s a vicarious thing, and we actually love putting that package together.
TW One thing we’ve seen is the tremendous growth of surfing. Do you think surfers are changing the culture of outside recreation?

CK I don’t know about that. If you were to take the same number of issues, say, 10 years ago, you might have said, hey, I see a lot of mountaineering in the pages, but I think to some degree we reflect the culture out there, not just the popularity of the sports but also the popularity of the athletes out there. Certainly, surfers, in terms of pop culture and the cool-credibility factor, are at the top of the heap. And we kind of go to them over and over for that reason. But also I think, covering these guys, because they’re in the water every day and have such an intimate relationship with the water, some of them are really the most inspiring environmental stories that we’re writing about. And the Surfrider Foundation, that’s something we’ve written quite a bit about, and one of the organizations that I think has seen a ton of growth over the last 10 years, and doing great work. And there’s no big Surfrider headquarters in D.C.; they’re basically an association of grassroots organizations all over the country.
TW Yeah, they’re great. Well, one of the things I always hear about Outside is that you guys write about the best places and then they get overrun. And also, that it’s all about the gear. Can you speak to those two points?

CK [Laughs] Well, I’ll take the gear first. Certainly, a lot of people who are into the outdoors are by nature obsessed with gear, like a reader of Wired magazine might be obsessed with the latest technology. We approach it the same way. We’re excited to research a new carbon-fiber mountain bike. People love to read about that stuff. And I think it goes to what I was saying before, which is that at the end of the day, we’re a commercial magazine, and so we reflect a lot of what readers bought and want out of the magazine. And gear is part and parcel of that. And—I don’t know if you’ve seen it—we do an annual Buyer’s Guide in the spring that’s separate from the magazine. It’s a publication that just goes to the newsstands and to a good segment of our subscribers. And it’s been phenomenally successful and I think speaks to the demand of consumers to see the latest and greatest in gear out there. But I think if you look at the overall percentage of pages it takes up in the publication, it’s certainly nowhere near 50 percent, probably not even 25 percent of what we’re writing about. As far as writing about places that soon get overrun: The thing about that is, if we weren’t writing about it, someone else would. There’s just an incredible demand, again, with people wanting to know where the next great place is to go. And we consider it part of our job: That’s why they’re buying our magazine, to find out where the next great place is to go.
TW I know a lot of mountain bikers and some other folks have some problems with Wilderness. Where do you come down on that, the balance of access and leaving places alone? You say we have a First Amendment right to adventure, but what are the limits on that?

CK You do find quite differing opinions from office to office within this building. Personally, I’m not a very big mountain biker, but I’m a huge trail runner, and I love the fact that I can go to certain places that I’m not going to see any mountain bikers or any motorized vehicles. Adventure is a First Amendment right, certainly, but there’s also a need to protect these areas if certain kinds of recreation are going to harm the areas. And it’s certainly right to have a certain amount of them regulated in a way that they’re not going to be destroyed. I’m sure there are some mountain bikers who would say that there’s no more impact on a trail than a trail runner would have, but I think a lot of people dispute that.
TW What do you think of all these magazines coming out with green issues now? What did you think of the Vanity Fair issue? They’re following their mission, focused on the whole celebrity aspect. I feel like they are doing a pretty strong job on those issues.

CK I completely agree with you. I think the fact that you’re seeing all of these green issues—I can’t start talking about it without being very grateful to Vanity Fair. They were the first ones to do it. Certainly, there are a lot of dedicated environmental magazines, where every issue is a green issue. But for big commercial magazines that are speaking to the elites to come out and put that many editorial resources toward the green issue last year, was kind of a watershed moment. And I think certainly the green movement is getting big again, and I think that was what announced to everybody that, boy, we’ve moved away from the dormant environmental movement that had been in the background, and on the fringe, and not the mainstream, to very much a mainstream thing, where you’re seeing Al Gore at the Oscars receiving his Oscar, being up there with Leo DiCaprio. There is a danger—and just a few days ago we were debating this at an editorial meeting—I don’t want to see the green movement become a fad. Because, as we know in America, fads have a very clear sell-by date. During the late ’80s and early ’90s, the environmental movement was huge and then went dormant in the ’90s. My fear is that because we’re doing a green issue—and Newsweek, Forbes or Elle magazine—I fear there is a trendiness aspect. I hope that, with consumers, and with people who we are trying to reach with this, that there’s not a backlash when they start saying, enough already, we don’t want to hear about this anymore.
TW Is Outside going to make its green issue an annual thing?

CK I can’t say that 100 percent at this point, but that’s definitely my desire. I think there are two things you can do. You can make a big impact with a single issue. But more important to me is that it’s a constant presence in the magazine, from month to month rather than just one month a year.
TW The photos that you get, especially for the Exposure section, are just so powerful. Can you speak to how you guys decide on those photos, and also didn’t Outside used to have a little more of a literary element with creative nonfiction or even fiction? Or am I mistaken there?

CK There have been fiction excerpts in the past. Probably 10 years in the past. As far as the photography and the design, two things on that: We have an incredibly talented creative director, Hannah McCaughey. And actually she is going to New York for the National Magazine Awards. We’re up for best design, which we’re really excited about. She brings an incredible design element to the magazine. I think when she came on board, if you were to look at Outside 10 years ago and beyond that, a lot of the photography you were seeing was kind of classic photography, which we still do a load of. She also brought a real portrait sensibility to the work we were doing and using guys like Dan Wickers and others who have shot all kinds of celebrities. Bringing that sort of photography to a portrait of a rock climber is a really cool thing to see for the first time, and which I think a lot of competitors weren’t doing. And as far as the Exposures go, those are one of the best things in the magazine going back 30 years, because it’s such a great interaction with our readers. A lot of them just are submitted by readers—some of them professional photographers, some of them amateurs—and we just get a ton of this photography every month. And I sit down with Hannah and our photography department, and we pick what we think is the best and what creates a nice mix together.
TW Are you there for the long run?

CK This was my dream job. And to have gotten it is an amazing feeling, and I can’t really imagine considering it as a stepping stone for me. There is not a magazine I’d rather be at that has this mix, and we write about the sports that I like to engage in. And I get to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and not New York City. All of those combined make the perfect gig for me, so I can’t imagine being anywhere else. When I’m done with Outside, I don’t know if it will be a matter of if I want to stay in magazines or if there will be magazines anymore.

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AZ With the move [to Portland], we contracted with an outside company to do all of our subscriptions. The general office atmosphere without those customer service calls coming in, it’s amazing. A big part of our customer service calls in the past have been people who prank subscribe them. Probably 40 percent of our customer service calls were people who were like, you know, I didn’t subscribe to this magazine and I’m pretty sure it’s my ex-boyfriend.
MCM Because of the name?
DR It’s funny because I know this happens a lot.

AZ I got called once by the police department in some town in Kentucky because they were actually doing an investigation. They were trying to get a restraining order against this woman’s ex-partner who was harassing her in many ways, but one of which was with a subscription to Bitch. I was like, I can’t help you, because the thing is, it’s sort of the perfect crime, because the person who sends it in doesn’t have to do anything. We have no real record of who they are. That was depressing on many, many levels, so I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that anymore.
MCM Relocating from the Bay Area to Portland, two of the most progressive areas in the country, how do you keep your perspective among such like-minded people?

AZ What I do a lot of is consume other media pop culture, and it is not difficult to be reminded. Reading newspapers, reading the Internet, I’m on a couple of list-serves that have to do with women in the media. There are daily reminders.
MCM You don’t feel disconnected because you’re in this bubble of progressiveness?

AZ Not at all, not at all. That was a concern in the Bay Area, too, especially because where our office was, we were in a building with a lot of progressive nonprofits. I suppose it could have felt like this bubble, harsh reminders occasionally that not everyone was on the same ideological page. But again I feel like there’s so much influence, without even thinking about it, that comes from popular culture.
DR I would definitely echo Andi. From my position, I’m bombarded with that stuff less. Because what I’m really trying to do is develop the organization. In that sense it’s really nice to be surrounded by like-minded people because you get that community. But it is true that we’ve just been inundated with people who want to help out and volunteer, which is fantastic. But I think a lot of times people do forget that we are a national organization. So we want to plug in here and get connected with other nonprofits and institutions, but we really do have to keep our eyes beyond that. So, I think that’s a challenge that we’ll have to balance on an organizational level: how to plug in simultaneously here while keeping our eyes on the larger picture.
MCM Do you have to do community outreach here, or are people just finding you?
DR People are definitely taking it upon themselves to come to us, which has been really great. People offering to help out, even just bringing us cookies and food, really doing sweet things like that.

AZ Who brought us cookies?
DR Uh, doughnuts. That’s true.

AZ It’s really nice to feel like we’re being seamlessly accepted into the community here.
MCM It feels to me that in 1996, when you started Bitch, or in the ’90s in general, riotgrrrl was huge, and there was more of a collective third-wave feminist movement. How do you feel feminism has changed, and have media evolved with it?

AZ I have to start by saying, third-wave feminism is a tricky term, and one that we’ve never really fully aligned with, partly because it’s understood to mean so many different things. For a lot people it’s just simply a chronological definition, and I suppose we would fall into third-wave feminism. But it’s been really diluted by the media definition. But I understand what you’re saying. In terms of generational feminism, things have definitely changed. And one of those things that is continually a thorn in my side is the fact that there is just a general acceptance that young women don’t care about feminism the way they did in the early ’90s. I just want to say that that’s really bogus. And it’s partly because mainstream media are dictating the terms of what constitutes feminism, and they’re not actually looking at grassroots activism. They’re looking at what they see as a kind of leadership void. They don’t see a Gloria Steinem, so they’re assuming that there’s nothing going on, which couldn’t be more false. There’s a ton of grassroots activism, campus activism. Thanks to the Internet, there’s a ton of opportunities for online networking and activism that really makes a difference: people linking to other people’s blogs, people alerting other people when there needs to be letters written. Planned Parenthood does a ton of activism. I think it’s changed for the better, actually, and partly because there’s so much more to protest. When I think back to 1996, I don’t want to say it seems quaint, but compared to now, I think there were fewer things to get really outraged about. It’s funny to think back then Clinton was in office; reproductive rights seemed safe. I don’t think anyone really foresaw what would happen with the Bush administration, this incredible sort of cultural backlash and where it’s going with respect to women’s autonomy. It happens to go that way. The more horrible civil and human rights violations, the more activism comes around to protest them. That’s what happens. I’m certainly not happy there’s that much more need for it. But I do think it’s really hard to ignore the volume of discourse now.
MCM You guys recently did a green issue. It was very well done. Environmentalist issues and feminist issue are social issues. There’s a lot of overlap. It’s long been established that environmental issues are women’s issues. Where do you see environmentalism falling into this generation of feminism? Does it have a place, do you see overlap?

AZ Overlapping between environmentalism and feminism? That’s a complicated question.
MCM It is a complicated question.

AZ Anecdotally, I see those two things overlapping, based on a lot of green-issue pitches we’re still getting, and letters we got. It’s really funny: One of the topics we got the most letters on from this issue, the Super Issue, was this top-dot line from a story excerpt we ran, the eating-disorder story excerpt. And in it there’s a line where the author refers to vegetarianism as the ultimate modern-day eating disorder. And I remember reading that, and we were under contract for serial rights with her publisher, so we couldn’t just willy-nilly change stuff. But I remember thinking, that’s going to get some letters. But we’re also of the opinion that we’re fine with letting writers or interviewers say what they want. We’re not really in the business of censoring that sort of stuff, but we’ve gotten like 10 letters about that one line. I think people really responded to that. They were like, hey, I can’t believe your magazine would denigrate vegetarianism in this way.
DR I think that people’s definitions of feminism, environmentalism and any of those things—there’s just so much overlap in those labels and words. I identify as an anarchist, and I can’t even tell where my anarchism begins and my feminism begins. They’re like the same thing. You know what I mean? Mutual support and cooperation and trying to tread lightly on the earth. All these things. I could even say that that’s environmentalism. I feel like that’s the way it is for a lot of people, that they have all these labels that they identify with. For me, feminism isn’t just about gender, it’s about power, too.
MCM There’s this huge sustainability movement that’s getting economic backing and mainstream media backing. They’re addressing a lot of issues that feminists are addressing, but no one is saying this is a feminist issue; it’s always an environmental issue.

AZ I actually have to say that’s a pet peeve of mine. People really are afraid of the idea of feminism. It might be that they don’t see the connections because they’re not looking for them, and it also might be that they just don’t want to make those connections because aligning yourself with the environmental movement or animal rights or vegetarianism is much cooler than aligning yourself with just feminism. Feminism is still seen as really uncool.
MH Is it uncool, or is it still seen as dangerous to the status quo?

AZ Both. When I say uncool, I’m saying that flippantly. Nobody wants to be the feminist, because that is still an outsider position, and it’s seen as too angry and serious and humorless. It’s interesting, because obviously every other mainstream magazine now is doing a green issue. I was just reading Vanity Fair’s. Elle just did one. In all of those I was really shocked in the way environmentalism was really qualified as something that was about the planet but not making connections to larger human-rights issues. Or doing so in a somewhat pandering way.
MH People don’t seem to address the issues of power that connect environmentalism, that connect feminism. Is that where you’re going with this?

AZ Yeah, and I kind of see that as a danger. It’s great that there’s a mainstream push to make people really aware of their role in environmentalism, but I think that separating it from other things is kind of dangerous.
MCM Do you see any other groups or individuals who are eco-feminists who could be voices in the mainstream? You have Vandana Shiva.
DR There’s only one person who comes to my mind right now. The woman who just wrote the book Aftershock: Patrice Jones. It’s specifically for activists who have gone through trauma and who have had to deal with that. She definitely identifies as an eco-feminist and tries to connect these various movements. She talks about the various class issues, race issues. That’s somebody who should definitely be a voice. No one else comes to mind who would identify as an eco-feminist. Carol Adams, is she still kicking?

AZ That’s the thing. I think these people by virtue of their association with feminism are never going to be considered mainstream. I mean, Carol Adams has been around for so long that certainly there’s been plenty of opportunity, but it hasn’t happened.
DR It will be interesting to see where this mainstream environmental movement goes and how women’s voices… you know, right now it’s very macho.
MCM So many environmental movements start with women. Mothers who are like, my child has horrible asthma and there’s this huge meat packing plant down the road. And that’s where it starts, but media don’t get ahold of it until Al Gore is speaking about it or Bono is speaking about it. It’s frustrating that those women’s voices—and many times minority women’s voices—are lost on the pathway to the media.

DR I think Erin Brockovich is still very relevant. I think Elle trotted her out in their green issue. She still definitely works on those issues. We need a capacity of those women. It’s not really enough to just have one.
MH Now that environmentalism is on this huge wave within the mainstream, are there people, eco-feminists, who can ride that wave into the mainstream and bring issues of power around gender roles?

DR I think it’s hard because a lot of mainstream environmentalism is not very radical, and I think people like Patrice Jones are bringing pretty radical ideas that probably would be embraced in the mainstream. Again, I don’t know how anyone on the fringes who has sort of radical politics or radical critiques, especially of our economic structure, is going to rise to the mainstream of any movement and be heard. It would be nice.

AZ The structure inherently prohibits it. I think Herbivore magazine does such a great job of really connecting all of those things, and I would love to see them…it’s not that they have mainstream qualities, but it’s a very accessible magazine. I would like to see them make a wedge, a foot in the door. There’s a magazine called Good. It’s really great. It’s incredibly well designed. It’s very, very conscious. It has mainstream elements, but it also is a showcase for people who aren’t celebrities, who have adopted environmentalism. They’re environmentalists who have gotten really well known in their respective fields.
MCM How do you see minorities playing into this generation of feminism? Is there a voice? Do you see those voices ignored a lot? I know that’s been a criticism of feminist movements throughout.

AZ Feminism has always had to struggle with the notion that it’s not a movement for women of color or working-class women or women who aren’t white and middle class. I definitely think that’s changing. There’s also a sense in which mainstream feminism has to acknowledge its whiteness in a lot of ways. A lot of times that can be difficult, because there are so many different kinds of bias that are unacknowledged, and it’s really hard to admit that’s happening. And unfortunately what happens a lot, and this is true of both female progressives and beyond, there’s a sense within the progressive community (the same thing that I think women of color felt victimized by in the ’70s), which is that we’re working for progressives first, and we’re not taking on special interests until the world is better for all progressives. I’m on a list-serve about women’s representation in the media, and a lot of posts are about there will be a panel about progressive media and there will be just eight white dudes. And so when a woman reaches out to the person who organized that panel, they say, “Well, we tried, but we couldn’t find any women, any people of color.” And it always does seem like this cop-out, like, well, you must of not have tried very hard. And it’s true that people do tend to look at their immediate circle, which may tend not to be as diverse as what else is out there.

MCM You guys are an alternative publication that is sold at alternative bookstores for $6, which is extremely accessible to a very specific population and not at all to other demographics. Do you have outreach efforts beyond the magazine?
DR We haven’t up until now. It’s kind of like what Andi said earlier. We have these ideas of what we’d like to do, but they just fall by the wayside, which is partly why we titled the new position for Amy “development/outreach” because we need to do a better job of being out there a little more. We have things like, it’s free to prisoners, but I wouldn’t say we have any proactive ways of doing it.

AZ It’s more like if people call and say, we’re having this conference and it’s for high school girls in Maryland, then we’ll send them off. We have to do more in terms of finding audiences.
MCM As you’ve moved up here, have your goals changed at all? Where do you see yourselves five to 10 years down the road?

AZ The main thing for us is that we just want to exist five to 10 years down the road. We’ve been in so much financial peril. Our national distributor went bankrupt so that has been…we’re very, very lucky. Some other magazines were not as lucky. That’s probably made us a little tunnel-visioned for the past few years, because we really just want to be able to survive and get from issue to issue without folding.
DR I would also say, me having come on three years ago, I want to make it a sustainable place for workers, like living wages. Because one of the reasons we moved up here is that we [weren’t] making a decent salary for ourselves. And I think that’s something that, especially in the nonprofit work, really gets shoved by the wayside. You have this culture of just working and working and working and not getting compensation, and that’s pretty wrong. I feel like, if we’re going to have a sustainable organization, we should also have a place where people can work and make a decent salary. Hopefully in five years we’ll have a bigger staff.
MCM Do you guys have benefits now?

DR We just got them for the first time.
MH With magazines that didn’t survive the hit from the national distributor, like Glamour, do you think you guys—not you guys specifically, but other independent magazines—will absorb their readership? Are we going toward a funneling of readership in the alternative press?
DR I kind of feel like we’ve already been there in some ways. It’s a tricky one. One of my biggest interests in outreach and collaboration is finding ways where Mother Jones can help Bitch and Bitch can help Glamour. Really find ways to funnel help to each other. It just gets really tricky because, as a nonprofit organization, we have a mission and our No. 1 priority is to be true to that mission. What I think really needs to happen—and I don’t think this is going to solve it, but what I think progressive publications need to have as part of their mission—is the idea of helping independent media in general, finding ways to collaborate and supporting each other’s work. I think the biggest challenge to all of us is the business infrastructure. That is what is so hard to get off the ground: the subscription management and everything that needs to happen on the business side of things.

MCM I have to ask because we are who we are: Do you guys print on recycled paper?
DR We are now at, I think it’s 30 percent. It’s not as high as it should be. We’ve gotten inquiries about that.