I’m a print guy, but I haven’t always been a print guy.
My first involvement with media was nearly 30 years ago, when I learned the nuts and bolts of video production in the late 1970s at Downtown Community Television (DCTV) in New York’s Chinatown. They trained you to shoot and edit tape – in those days, it was ½-inch Beta black and white tape, and it wasn’t on cassettes, it was reel-to-reel – and you could then borrow a camera and recorder and go out into the city and shoot some tape. The beauty was that unlike home movies on 8 millimeter or Super 8 film, it required no processing. You could take a look at the video right away and see what you had. If you didn’t like it, you could re-shoot. You could also book time on their editing equipment and turn your raw footage into tapes that you could show on your TV.
Today, in the age of YouTube, it’s hard to imagine that this was revolutionary, but it was. Bringing that communications tool into the hands of thousands of young people was an incredibly powerful mission and there was a wonderful spirit of great possibility that pervaded the place. I haven’t been back to DCTV in 30 years, but I’m happy to know that they are still going strong.
That same kind of excitement, that same sense of limitless potential exists now in the use of the web. Yes, Northern Woodlands is primarily print – we publish a magazine, books, and syndicate columns in newspapers – but we recognize the great value and vitality of the web. We’ve had a site for a number of years, but have just re-tooled it to try to bring our message of stewardship to a wider audience. I hope you’ll spend some time with us. Some of the new features include:
An expanding archive of magazine stories.
Each week, we’ll post our syndicated ecology article.
Wondering what’s happening in the woods this week? Check out Ginny’s calendar.
And this blog, which we’ll post each week.