I’ve been a long time subscriber to PR Newswire for Journalists. This free service allows writers to subscribe to press releases on specific topics or covering specific regions. This service is widely used by newspapers and corporate blogs. It’s not uncommon to see the same quote from an expert appear all over the web at once and then be able to trace it back to a statement in a PR Newswire mailing.

I originally subscribed so I could troubleshoot mail issues affecting my employer’s staff writers who use the service. As a blogger, I often use the service myself to search for inspiration or ideas when I am stumped or just too busy to work on an elaborate post. Two of the more popular post’s I’ve done written, Doors to Diplomacy 2008 Winners Announced and Sour Green Insanity were inspired by press releases I received through PR Newswire.

One of the chief benefits I find with subscribing to this service is the way you get to see the raw spin on issues, products, and people that interested parties try to put forth in the media. Cynics like me often get the pleasure of mocking it the way I did with the Vlasic baby-naming contest in Sour Green Insanity. Other times it gives me the chance to spend time examining and complimenting people’s hard work the way I tried to do with the student winners mentioned in the Doors to Diplomacy 2008 awards post. And other times, like now, you can just sit back and be overwhelmed by the number of companies and organizations jumping on a conceptual bandwagon and trying to use it for their own benefit.

I have been busy and I haven’t had a chance to check my PR Newswire messages for a couple days. When I looked this afternoon I noticed a recurring theme.

Green is the New Black

In less than the last 24 hours there have been fifteen major press releases with the word Green in the title. Sadly, it falls to the recipient/journalist to break down the fluff from the substance and the corporate spin from the actual news. Usually I do this in my head, but today I all going to let you listen in.

• Don’t Kill the Green Goose - This release, from the Institute for Policy Innovation - a think-tank with focus is on approaches to governing that harness the strengths of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. This release talks up a new publication of theirs with the same title as the press release that expounds on the importance of letting companies maintain strict control of green technology innovations to protect their profits. Basic Theme: Every time a company loses money to intellectual property theft a baby polar bear dies.
• Give ‘Green’ for Father’s Day - If your dad has enough ties and no more room for another bottle of cologne, Pulstar thinks you should get him new spark plugs. These plugs - they promise - will increase his gas mileage by up to 6% (thats the green part). Watch for “Green Gift” lists for Father’s Day this year and you may see the Pulstar Pulse Plugs featured of this press release does its job properly.
• Planet Green Presents ‘Get Your Green On’ Events at Major League Baseball Stadiums Across the Country - The Planet Green, the Discovery channel’s environmental issues channel is partnering with Major League Baseball to get green initiatives in front of American baseball fans. This should help people ignore the major amounts of energy used and waste generated at an evening baseball game. Lighting major stadium, fans driving to the games, and the food and drinks provided in disposable paperware are all things that need to be addressed, but MLB with the help of Planet Green will instead chip away at the edges by giving away 5000 public transit passes to fans.
• Internet Evolution Launches New Green IT Video Tutorial - This one is actually pretty cool. Internet Evolution with its tagline “Not for thickies” is owned by the same folks who own PR Newswire. They are a newish portal site focused on the “Future of the Internet”. Most, if not all, of their content is sponsored by IT companies so it’s not an unbiased source of news, but it does offer the sorts of research and reports that only an R&D budget can provide. The multimedia tutorials tackle problems with hard facts and numbers and also offer solutions and guidelines on implementing green technology best practices.
• Density Dynamics Acquires Green Technology - this is a more typical pres release. Density Dynamics has purchased the new, greener high efficiency solid-state storage technology developed by another company. This will help large networks and server farms store and access data using less energy. This stuff is not for the home user, but if Google or Yahoo or Citibank adopts the technology it could make a difference in computing’s energy footprint.
• America Is Going Green - But Has It Moved Under the Sink? - I love these types of press releases. In this format, the creator “discovers” a big problem that, coincidentally, they can solve. In this one, the company that manufactures CLR brand cleaning products polled consumers and found that while nearly seven out of 10 Americans feel it is their individual duty to protect the environment, 70% of the household cleaners in the average American household are environmentally friendly. And YES! There is an answer. The release itemizes three CLR products that, with regular use, will remove mold and mildew and guilt from the consumer’s home and soul.
• Victory Garden Revival: Green Living, Green Savings - This is another useful one. It is essentially similar to the previous release from the CLR folks in that it presents a problem and a solution, however, this one gives common sense information as part of the solution and didn’t need to sponsor a survey to prove the existence of a problem. Jack Olive, Master Gardener and founder of online garden retailer MasterGardening.com provides practical information that anyone who wants to try growing some of their own food can use. Hearkening back to the two World Wars when Americans were encouraged to grow fruits and vegetables to ease the pressure of public food supply, Mr. Olive gives plenty of reasosn why Americans today might want to do the same thing. By focusing on natural gardening methods and the environmental benefit of eating food produced at home as opposed to halfway around the world he gets points for using Green in two different ways.
• Tana Ramsay Launches Playhouse Disney’s Green Awards for Preschoolers - This release commemorates one year anniversary of Playhouse Disney’s Playing for The Planet campaign, the first of its kind to bring environmentalism to life in a fun way for preschoolers, families and nurseries around the UK. Gordon Ramsay’s wife introduces five tips to get preschool age kids involved in being good energy and environmental stewards by bringing practical advice down to their level. These tips involve teaching small children the importance of powering down electronics, recycling, and not wasting water. The fifth tip involves children spreading climate change information to their friends. I’d love to be a fly on the wall listening to a four year old explain climate change to another four year old.
• Supermicro Demos Green Leadership at Computex 2008 - Supermicro, with some justification, is tooting its own horn. Supermicro (makers of my own media PC’s motherboard) have consistently held the lead in affordable business and enterprise class computing hardware. Next time you are shopping around for a webhost, ask if they are using the SuperMicro SuperBlade servers. If customers demand greener computing in the hosting server farms, at least some hosting providers will rush to fill that niche.
• Planet Green and Access Hollywood Roll Out the ‘Green Carpet’ for HOLLYWOOD GREEN WITH MARIA MENOUNOS - Another classic press release. This one announces and describes a new TV show that is being added to the Planet Green channel line-up. This weekly one-hour entertainment magazine series that follows up-to-the-minute Hollywood news on the hottest stars making green headlines in movies, television, music and fashion probably burns enough energy to produce to offset much of the work done by the people it follows.
• New Report: Millions of U.S. and Pennsylvania Workers to Gain from Green Investments - Green Jobs for America Campaign, a national campaign of the Sierra Club, Blue Green Alliance, United Steel Workers, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) want you to know about a new report on “green jobs” from Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim of the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The report is summarized as: “The jobs needed to develop a green economy in America not only exist today but are in high-demand and will enjoy greater job security in a sustainable, clean-energy economy.” Presumably the full report will be forthcoming.
• Carnegie Mellon Names ‘Green’ Dorm in Honor of Its Fifth President, H. Guyford Stever - Stever House is notable for being the first dormitory in the nation to be certified for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED from the U.S. Green Building Council). It has a “silver” LEED designation because of its low environmental impact in both construction and function. Sadly, the press release does not go into the details about why and how the building earned its LEED Silver status. If It did I would probably wrote a post about it. Instead it devolves into H. Guyford Stever’s contributions to the university and the history of the school itself. This is not a bad thing, but a press release that is 80% copy and pasted info from the releaser’s website makes poor blog fodder.
• New Seychelle Water Filtration Bottles Replace Bottled Water - Now Consumers Can Go GREEN Because the Planet Matters! - I suspect this press release was fueled by a few too many Red Bulls consumed by the writer. The exclamation point in the title is followed by no less than six more in the first half of the copy. This is actually a pretty cool product that should make folks like Will over at WillTaft.com take notice. Seychelle is releasing a pair of products that can filter up to 50 gallons of tap water to produce filtered water of a quality comparable to bottled water. Nobody is happy about using plastic bottles that may or may not be recycled. This gives people who are serious about reducing their waste stream an affordable option.
• Up for Debate This Week: Funds for ‘Green’ Schools, Chesapeake Bay Trails, and Greenhouse Gas Control - This is just an overview of the post-Memorial Day agenda in Congress provided by WashingtonWatch.com. “WashingtonWatch.com delivers the numbers behind proposed legislation and regulation. It is important to understand where these numbers come from and what they mean.” There is a definate specific take involved in their coverage of the bills before Congress. They combine polling info with a “per family” cost for each bill if possible. I, personally, think the cost elements become less and less relevant as climate and environmental problems worsen. The time to shop around for cheap solutions was when Jimmy Carter asked us to turn down our thermostats and put on a sweater.
• usps.com Goes ‘Green’ - Yes Virginia, Federal governmental agencies issue press releases. This one is geared to bring attention to the green offerings at your local post office as well as pointing out steps the US Postal Service has taken to reduce its waste and energy use. The USPS in size and scope, rivals any of the largest US corporations so changes it makes have far more effect than changes we can make as individual citizens and the USPS knows this. They used this press release to focus on programs like their “Mail Back” initative that helps consumers recycle ink cartridges, cell phones, PDAs, and other small electronics alongside large efforts to make the thousands of buildings housing the USPS more energy efficient. You can see this release in its entirety on the USPS website.

So, not all the press releases are self serving air brushed advertisements and some contain information that many people will find both useful and reassuring. None of these had what it takes to inspire me to write a full post about the featured topic, however I don’t regret reading and deciphering them.

A quick search on Google showed me that many of these have been picked up by both professional news sites and bloggers alike.