News: OnEarth Magazine

"But then you'd never know where your paper clips were," I objected.

He looked at me like a missionary trying to win a convert. "Change is good!" he said.

Actually, change for its own sake is pointless. Paper clips, and other things more valuable, can get lost. Even my friend with the ever-varying desk admits that he tries not to change the important things in his life.

With a new name and a new look, this magazine has just gone through one of the biggest changes for any publication. But we have the best of reasons: doing a better job of getting the word out. And we have no intention of letting the important things get lost. Our strength has always been exploring critical and emerging environmental issues in depth, and at OnEarth, that's never going to change.

OnEarth was born in 1979 as The Amicus Journal, an independent environmental forum conceived by editor Peter Borrelli, championed by NRDC then-executive director John Adams, and made possible by Joan Davidson of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Its purpose was to "encourage public understanding, discussion, and debate on a wide variety of complex environmental issues," as Peter put it in his introductory editorial. Back then the magazine was written in large part by specialists. It often covered legal issues (hence the name, from the legal term amicus curiae). A good portion of its readership, then only a few ten thousand strong, were also specialists.

Over the years, as the environmental movement grew, Amicus changed. It never shrank from complexity, but as it reached more people -- more than 125,000 NRDC members and others today -- it became less a policy journal, more a magazine for the growing numbers of people who are embracing environmental values in their everyday lives. In this first issue of OnEarth, you'll find the meaty features that are our core tradition, but you'll also find an expanded Living Green section, more vivid graphics, and a new, more colorful, more opinionated Briefings section.

And the name? Quite simply, it's long past time for a name that says we're about the environment. We still exist to "encourage public discussion," and part of that is reaching out to potential new readers. But you'll notice the name isn't simply Earth. We aren't about ecology in the abstract. We're about people in their environment -- the state of living on earth -- how we affect the planet, how it affects us, and most of all, how we can do it right.

KATHRIN DAY LASSILA
Editor

OnEarth. Fall 2001
Copyright 2001 by the Natural Resources Defense Council

OnEarth Home | Fall 2001 Contents | Subscribe | Archive | Email the Editor