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Green-Collar, Where it Started

by Keith SchneiderApril 22, 2008January 26, 20120

In 1999 Alan Durning, the author and director of the Sightline Institute in Seattle, published a prescient and well-received book about natural resources and economics entitled â€œGreen-Collar Jobs.â€ â€œA sustainable economy can generate employment just as well as an unsustainable one,â€ Durning wrote. â€œFor every declining industry, like those that log old-growth forests, make farm chemicals, and build roads, there is an emerging one to take up the slack, like those that advise organic farmers, …

Reign of Sand

by Keith SchneiderDecember 17, 2007December 17, 20073

Late last summer Circle of Blue, a global multi-media journalism project based here in Traverse City, sent a reporting team to Inner Mongolia, China to cover the front lines of the freshwater crisis in Asia. The members included a writer based in South Korea, a photographer from Australia, an artist and grasslands specialist from Beijing, and Eric Daigh, a videographer and multi-media producer from Circle of Blue’s main office in northern Michigan. Circle of Blue’s …

Presidential Candidates on Smart Growth

by Keith SchneiderDecember 17, 2007December 17, 20070

The presidential candidates of both parties have uttered next to nothing about urban development, suburban well-being, and how to improve the quality of life in the places where 80 percent of Americans reside. But the Web sites of the candidates, particularly the Democrats, offer some clues. A useful summary was posted earlier this month by Robert Godspeed on Planetizen.com.

Flip: What The Web Will Look Like Now

by Keith SchneiderDecember 11, 2007December 11, 20071

My friend Brad Johnson, a graphic designer who with his wife, Julie Beeler, manages one of the hottest interactive multi-media studios in the country, Second Story Media in Portland, Oregon, sent me a link the other day to motionographer.com. Motionographer is a portal to much of the hottest and most creative online motion graphic artistry now happening around the United States and the world. I’m often asked where the Web is going. My response since …

Saying Goodbye To Thanksgivings With Newspapers

by Keith SchneiderNovember 20, 20071

Thanksgiving at my house in White Plains wasn’t just the day thatÂ you could hear the trumpets and trombones warming up at the old stadium for the annual high school football game, orÂ when grandmothers and grandfathers from both sides,Â aunts and uncles and cousins showed up for Mom’s turkey feast. It also was the day that the Reporter Dispatch thumped onto the driveway, a holiday newspaper stuffed with advertisements and inserts. It’s still that way in some …

New Measure of Community Vitality: Neighborhoods That Blog

by Keith SchneiderApril 30, 2007April 30, 20072

Outside.in isÂ a Web site launched last year to gatherÂ the panoply of writers doingÂ place-based blogging.Â The site is the brain child of Steven Johnson, aÂ prominent writer and bloggerÂ in New York who’s written five books and contributes to, among others, the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Johnson was helped by John Geraci, a social media specialist, and John Seely Brown, the former chiefÂ scientist of the Xerox Corporation and member of the board ofÂ Amazon and the MacArthur Foundation. …

Ellie Mae Returns

by Keith SchneiderApril 26, 2007April 26, 20070

Â Benzonia, our little town of 500Â in northwest Michigan’s Benzie County, is abuzz with the story of Ellie Mae, the little black, nearly 18-year-old dogÂ that turned up alive and well after wandering in the woods here for two weeks. Ellie Mae, of course, is the canine matriarch of my family.Â I reported in an April 12 post that she’dÂ walked off the back porch in half a foot of snow and never returned.Â She’s back, is in good …

About

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 22, 2007March 13, 20080

Keith Schneider is a nationally known journalist, strategic communications, and public policy specialist based in northern Michigan, where he’s lived since 1993. He currently serves as communications director for the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of labor, environmental, and business groups working on accelerating the clean energy economy and the millions of new jobs that will result. He splits his time in northern Michigan and in San Francisco, where the Apollo Alliance is based. In …