permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Loren Davidson wrote:
> > At 7:22 PM -0800 12/23/06, John Fritz wrote:
> > The following is my first draft of a petition to The Mother Earth 
> > News (MEN) for and update to their March/April 1980 story about the 
> > methods of Jean Pain, in his use of forest thicket compost.

> Rather than presenting them with a heavily legalese-oriented document 
> full of "whereas" and such, *write* the update to that article and 
> submit it to them, along with a cover letter saying "I've heard from 
> X number of people who say they'll buy the issue this comes out in if 
> you publish this."
>
> This will work better for the following reasons:
>
> 1) They need good content, and if you provide it for them, you get 
> brownie points.
>
> 2) They need to sell magazines in order to stay in business; some 
> assurances that this article will help sell magazines will give you 
> brownie points.
>
> 3) Nobody likes being confronted with legalese in an attempt to force 
> them to write on a particular topic.
>
> 4) If you write the article, you get the article you want by someone 
> who knows the subject matter, rather than getting a 
> hastily-researched hack by someone who may have no love for or 
> expertise in the subject.
>
> Trying the petition thing is, IMO, like shouting at your corn to grow 
> bigger with more ears. It pays no attention at all to what the corn 
> wants and needs in order to do that.

Maybe even suggest that they publish one article each month written and donated to them by the public, articles like the 
one you have suggested. They would get a freebie, good PR and be recognized for publishing quality information and 
participating in "open source" publishing of gardening literature. This would be an exciting new direction for them to take.

--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://market-farming.com/venaurafarm
http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech