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I have tons of news to report this month. Our friends at Consolidated Press and our new paper supplier, New Leaf, have teamed up to provide us with 100% post-consumer recycled paper, a product called "news," for our inside pages. I’m sure that makes us the first publication printed on a web press in Seattle on 100% post-consumer recycled content. I believe this change is another way that we can walk our talk and be more respectful of our planet. This is much more than a symbolic gesture. Although we were using one of the highest post-consumer recycled content papers readily available here before, for this issue alone this change saves 112 fully grown trees, 24,250 gallons of water, 96 million BTUs of energy, 5,624 pounds of solid waste and 17,511 pounds of greenhouse gases. Literally, tons of good news! We have gotten smaller. With this issue we introduce our magazine-style size. The New Times is trimmed to 10" by 12" — slightly smaller than our old tabloid size. We think you will find it much more reader friendly. We’re getting larger. In the September issue I plan to announce the addition of a full time editor to our staff. I also plan to add another staff position by year-end. We are quickly outgrowing our current office space, so we’ll be initiating a search for larger offices in the coming weeks. Watch for details on these exciting changes. Before I became publisher of The New Times, I admired the from-the-heart messages of Krysta Gibson, the founding publisher. As publisher of The New Times for the last 6.5 years, I have embarked upon a steady stream of changes. I have used these pages to share my personal challenges and joys as I have changed along with the publication. Our readership is among the more intuitive, well-educated audiences, and I have always tried to speak my truth with the great integrity. When The New Times was founded in the mid 1980s, it served an important role in connecting and empowering a marginalized community of truth-seekers — people who were exploring spiritual paths, personal growth and healing techniques that were shunned by the mainstream at that time. Back then, "holistic" was a rare, progressive concept, and The New Times was on the leading edge of a newly emerging culture. In our early years, at least one Christian pastor admonished his parishioners to pick up every stack of The New Times and destroy them all, because our pages contained the work of the devil. Nearly 20 years later, many holistic practices have been appropriated by the general public and integrated into everyday life. When I began to see articles about feng shui, yoga and therapeutic touch in the Seattle Times and articles about meditation, aromatherapy and astrology in The Wall Street Journal, I realized that an important shift in consciousness had occurred and that The New Times’ role in creating positive change needed to refocused. The steps we are now taking move us into new territory. What shift in consciousness are we now called to help co-create? There seems to be a greater sense of the finiteness of our natural resources and more concern about the effects of the foods we eat and the things we consume. Until recently, our editorial policy screened out all but the "good" news; we exclusively printed inspiring stories with how-to information to help our readers to live happier, healthier lives. One important role now for The New Times is to bring new readers to the table with offerings about green living, sustainability, natural products and social justice, while providing increasing quality in the articles about spirituality and wellness that are our tradition. Our longtime readers may now feel called at a deeper level to help make the world a better place and likely want to be more informed in these topic areas. We have received plenty of positive feedback about the latest changes we’ve been making. At a philosophical level, this seems easy, exciting and important, and, before I go on, I want to assure you that I am 100% behind the next steps in our evolution. However, some aspects of this expansion into new editorial territory may not be easy for some of our longtime readers and are not always easy for me. I have long felt most comfortable expending my life energy to build bridges and see the good in all of creation. As we identify and shed light on important truths in our world that deserve our readers’ attention, we will be bringing to light the dark side and unpleasantness that does in fact exist. At one level, this process can feel like polarization, just the opposite of the "we are one" peacemaking track that I’ve been on for years and to which The New Times historically aspired. But distancing ourselves from some of the ugly truths in our world is also a form of polarization. I recently had the pleasure of spending 10 hours at a weekend workshop with Gregg Braden. Gregg’s cutting-edge work in the area where ancient spiritual truths and modern science meet is directed at personal and collective empowerment — empowerment that has the potential to make huge positive changes on our planet and all that exists here. There are lots of things that need positive change in our world and while, on many levels, huge progress is being made, there are still seemingly overwhelming problems to be solved. These problems will take time to solve, even with greater empowerment. One of Gregg’s quotes sticks in my mind: "Those who fight buy us time." So perhaps some of the discomfort I feel around some aspects of our new editorial direction relates to my own nature of not wanting to stir up unnecessary trouble. Many times, we’ve printed an article, and I’ve wondered, "Why are we printing this?" only to receive, months later, a touching letter from a reader whose life was changed by reading it. I have come to know that I don’t have to resonate with every article. I certainly know that one person’s epiphany is not another person’s epiphany. We’ve printed many beautiful articles that were inspired by one person’s courageous breakthrough and subsequently received feedback that that content was "airy-fairy," "woo-woo," or "fluff." Hopefully we’ve printed and will continue to print something for all of our readers, but I have no illusion that every story will be embraced by every reader. As an Alaska native who spent 45 years living in and traveling throughout Alaska, I frankly don’t share the bias of the author of our cover story, "Cruise Ship Blues," and I take exception to some of the points he makes. I do, however, share his desire for cleaner oceans and his concern about the social impacts of large-scale activities that are controlled from distant places. My personal bias aside, the author’s viewpoint is worthy of consideration by an intelligent and intuitive audience. So, like the early explorers who settled this area, we continue to pioneer a future that is better than the past that brought us here. In doing so, we are called to stretch and to find resources within ourselves that we may not have realized were there. We continue to want to shine the light on people who are coming up with positive alternatives that will inspire the best in us, and we’ll also want to expose the truth in areas where we think our readers would like to be informed and to help shape our individual and collective decision-making. Our reader feedback has historically played an important part in our selection of editorial content and other areas of our work. As always, I invite you to let me or our editor know where we should be shining our increasingly powerful spotlight in the coming months and years. And whether you choose to share your thoughts with us or not, I welcome you to join us for the next steps in our journey. Some may call these interesting times. I call them exciting times. — Deverick Martin |
