Tweet or Die

During my Washington days at the ACLU, we worked quite often with the good folks at the consumer action group Public Citizen, which was originally founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. That's why I noticed a LA Times column about Joan Claybrook's decision to retire after 27 years as president of Public Citizen and clicked through to read about what's next in the world of consumer activism.

Horrified is a strong word, but on first blush that's what I felt when I read the following passage:

"We used to put out press releases and they'd be on the evening news," (Nader) said. "Now you can't even get them on cable."

Nader's consumer advocacy, of course, has been overshadowed by his political ambitions (for which he still has a lot to answer, if you ask me). But he makes a good point.

There's so much clutter in the media marketplace, so much noise from competing interests that it's increasingly difficult for a nonprofit group to get its message across, much less stir up sufficient outrage to catalyze political action.

"The indications are very bad," Nader, 74, said of the future. "We all thought the Internet would give us a resurgence. The big hope was that you could band people together quickly and cheaply, but it hasn't worked out."

I hope the next leader of Public Citizen doesn't take such a defeatest attitude when it comes to organizing and media outreach. If so, we can pretty much guarantee that in a few years there won't be a Public Citizen around to fight for airbags in cars or against toxic chemicals or all the other landmark victories the group has scored over the last four decades.

I'm sorry to say that this defeatest attitude about media and the Internet runs rampant through progressive organizations. (And perhaps those on the right, but I can't speak from personal experience there.)

So many folks on our side of the field see the quickly deteriorating landscape of mainstream media and throw up their hands. (For a particularly devasting look at what's happening in the nation's newsrooms, follow @themediaisdying on Twitter. But warning: as a colleague commented, "these updates should come with a razor blade." You can also follow NRDC's Switchboard at @NRDCswitchboard or check out my colleague Scott Dodd's blog for more information about green tweeters.)

And it is true. No longer do the tried and true ways of media outreach and organizing work. Increasingly information consumers are no longer content to be fed an institutional view of the world. We want our information boiled down to its essence -- Twitter's 140 characters anyone? -- and we want information that helps us make up our minds about complicated issues rather than being told what to think about those same issues.

Organizations that do not experiment and learn will quietely fade away, lose their influence and eventually disappear. Groups that do experiment and evolve will come out of what is inevitably going to be a difficult time stronger and ready to fight new battles for consumer rights, public information or even the environmental health of the planet.

 

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