More Companies Seeking Green $$$$$

ONLINE publishers are strapping on their Birkenstocks.

Buoyed by the breakaway success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film documentary of Al Gore’s environmental lecture, publishers like The Washington Post, National Geographic and others are increasing their offerings of “green” content, hoping to attract readers and advertising revenues from manufacturers and retailers who are suddenly walking the earth-friendly path. 

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online arm of The Washington Post Company, introduced Sprig.com, a new Web site aimed at environmentally conscious women this week. “If you looked at 10 new markets to go after right now, this would probably be close to the top, because the number of companies advertising green stuff will explode in the next couple of years,” said Josh Bernoff, an online media analyst with Forrester Research, a consulting firm. “And having an established company behind it is a good way to kick something like this off.”

Sprig.com features articles in five categories: food, fashion, beauty, home and lifestyle, with videos liberally mixed into each section. In the beauty section, a video features an eco-friendly manicure and pedicure, while in the food section, visitors can watch organic cooking demonstrations. The site will post about six new articles a day, written in a way one might characterize as Green Lite.

“We’re targeting this to the 95 percent of people who want to be 5 percent green,” said Jeanie Pyun, Sprig’s editor in chief. “Not the 5 percent of people who want to be 95 percent green.”

The National Geographic Society also will roll out a new site on Monday, Green.NationalGeographic.com. That site will include more than 2,000 pages of environmental news, how-to videos and tips on eco-friendly travel and activities.

According to Betsy Scolnik, president of National Geographic’s online division, the new site follows last month’s acquisition of TheGreenGuide.com, a Web site that, among other things, offers buying guides in various categories. TheGreenGuide’s content, she said, will appear both on NationalGeographic.com as well as the new “green” site.

To build out the content on Green.NationalGeographic.com, Ms. Scolnik said the organization is relying on its National Geographic News division, in which more than 200 correspondents file daily reports on environmental news from around the world. Advertising support for this type of news, Ms. Scolnik said, has grown briskly in the past year.

“We’ve definitely seen more advertisers interested in this type of content,” she said. “It’s thrilling to us that everybody’s interested in the planet — finally.”

So what’s wrong with what Sprig and NG are doing? They both are so Web 1.0!

Compared to what else is happening right now on the Web, they could have a lot more. It’s a typical media company attitude to say ‘We control the editorial because we’re the smart people These days, you have to admit the readers are the smart people, too and support their input.

The above was excerpted, with my comments, from here.