After folding its print edition, E — The Environmental Magazine is plotting a comeback as a digital-only operation under the EarthTalk banner.
EarthTalk was the name of one of the Norwalk, Conn., magazine’s most popular columns. The bimonthly magazine launched in 1990 and existed for most of its life as a not-for-profit.
Revenue, which peaked at $1.2 million, has been running around $800,000, including a variety of grants, advertising and subscriptions, according to founder and publisher Doug Moss.
E was one of a slew of Earth-friendly mags that launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Others, including Garbage, BuzzWorm and Waste Age, have long since folded.
While a startup publication is always a risky venture, Moss said the environmental niche magazines were mostly victims of the green movement going mainstream.
“The environmental movement is what is killing environmental publications,” he said. “It seems every major magazine has some green coverage these days.”
Magazines as diverse as Elle and Vanity Fair have cranked out green issues in the past five years. At the same time, some of the earlier environmental advertisers migrated to health or fitness titles rather than staying in the smaller-circulation environmental titles.
For a while, the EarthTalk column was syndicated and ran in about 20 newspapers, generating $7,000 a year.
But that amount was so paltry that Moss decided to offer it for free via self syndication, and it shot up to 1,800 outlets. At the time, he figured it was good publicity for the main magazine.
“If you want to change the world, you have to reach more than the hard-core activists,” he said.
Now he is trying to make a go of it as a digital-only publication that he hopes to launch within the next two months.
“It will probably be a free website,” he said. “We’re hoping to get by with sponsors, Google ads and the smaller advertisers who have been with us in recent years.”
The already small staff has been reduced from five to two: Moss and the column’s writer, Seattle-based Roddy Scheer. Former ad director Karen Soucy is now working part-time.
“It is tough being a not-for-profit,” said Moss. “You always have to keep one eye on the fundraising.”