It's a tough time for print media, with unrelenting competitive pressures from proliferating alternatives for getting news and information on television and online. The magazine In Business: Creating Sustainable Enterprises and Communities became the latest casualty, closing its doors after nearly thirty years in operation.
I subscribed ten years ago, and learned about the activities of socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurs across the country. I learned about new concepts like thinker Bill McDonough's "cradle-to-cradle" vision for closing production loops, putting waste into new products rather than landfills. I learned about application of this concept in eco-industrial parks and deconstruction rather than demolition of old buildings (a much more useful process than the "deconstruction" I learned about in Philosophy classes). I learned about New Urbanism and ecotourism. I even had the privilege, thanks to support from ever-generous editors Jerry and Nora Goldstein, of writing a few articles for In Business.
What distinguished the magazine is that it focussed on small- and large-scale ways to do good and make good. Business trends and activities in the magazine varied from the work of committed activists to save the first Community Service Agriculture farm in Massachusetts, a modest 17 acres worth protecting, to the multimillion-dollar chocolate bar company that protects endangered species, to a cool nationwide trend of reusing abandoned buildings downtown as art studios. In Business was a one-stop shopping place for stories about innovative business ventures that ran the gamut in terms of scale.
While I look forward to receiving its sister publication, the better-known BioCycle, I will now have to hunt down other means to learn what's new in the world of sustainable business. Huge kudos to Jerry, Nora and the staff and advisers at JG Press for running such a useful publication for nearly thirty years. I will miss it.