‘ Audubon is not Audubon’: Journalism as communicative logic in the pages of an NGO-produced magazine,1960–1976

Method

In light of the dearth of historic research on NGOs as information producers, Audubon was selected as a case study because of its status as a leader among NGO publications. It is one of the longest-running NGO publications in the United States as well as one of the most prestigious, having won numerous National Magazine Awards since its first in 1975 (American Society of Magazine Editors, n.d.), and environmental journalists still consider it the most attractive environmental NGO magazine to publish in (Comfort and Blankenship, 2018). Similar to the tradition of examining top commercial news outlets for indications of trends in the journalistic field, a study of Audubon has the potential to illuminate trends in the environmental press and NGO information production more broadly. The time period, 1960–1976, captures Audubon before, during, and after the peak of American public interest in environmentalism, which is usually dated to 1968–1972 (Stradling, 2012). During the 1960s, the membership of the top 10 American environmental NGOs increased sevenfold (Switzer, 2003). The National Audubon Society experienced the largest growth, starting the decade with 32,000 members and ending it with almost 250,000 and growing (Mitchell et al., 1991). This popular groundswell has been attributed to a number of causes, such as post-war affluence contributing to an American population with more capacity for environmental concern (Hays, 1987), the publication of Silent Spring (Parks, 2017), and a series of high-profile environmental disasters that captured the public imagination (Sale, 1993).

This period of great foment has the potential to reveal changes in information production logics through the pages of Audubon. The time period first captures the magazine pre-Silent Spring, which had a galvanizing effect on the percolating American environmental movement after its publication in 1962 (Sale, 1993) and continues through the peak of the public frenzy around environmental issues at the turn of the 1970s. The study period ends with two events: first, Audubon’s National Magazine Award for reporting excellence in 1975, and its editor’s call for balance in wildlife reporting in 1976. The author closely reviewed issues of Audubon from 1960 to 1976, taking particular note of changes in the masthead, overall structure of the magazine, and style and content of articles to reveal trends over time. Informed by the literature on NGO information logics and the shifting boundaries of journalistic professionalism in the 1960s, the author especially examined issues for changes in writer biographies as well as shifts in tone, items related to journalistic practice (such as the use of sources, an omniscient narrator, and/or the presentation of a plurality of perspectives), and overall topic trends.

A bird-watching journal: 1960–1965

In the early 1960s, already seven decades in existence, Audubon was a black-and-white bimonthly magazine that continued its long tradition of chronicling natural histories of birds and narratives of bird-watching. While its writers were rarely fully amateur anymore – by the 1940s, many of them were paid (Peterson, 1973) – they were seldom professional journalists or writers. Instead, they were scientists, environmental activists, academics, and National Audubon Society employees. Audubon articles during these years fell into three general categories: stories about birds and bird-watching, personal travel narratives highlighting an interesting and imperiled ecosystem, and service articles featuring the organization. Naturally, birds took up the most inches in the pages of Audubon. This mirrored the organization’s longtime conservation focus specifically on bird protection.

Articles about birds and bird-watching were of two types: First, a personal narrative about a bird sighting near the writer’s home, and second, a natural history of a species. The former category was often written by the amateur-enthusiast type who had populated previous decades of Audubon. Ruth Thomas, described by then-editor John Vosburgh as ‘a bird-bander’, contributed articles in this genre for over a decade. A typical example was ‘Wren Forever’, in which she described a Bewick’s wren at her backyard feeder with a broken leg. ‘I watched with dismay as Wren took one hop and fell to his breast’, she wrote (Thomas, 1961: 16). Sewall Pettingill, an ornithologist and Audubon board member, wrote a long-running column in the magazine that recounted his bird-watching trips across the country. ‘A good headquarters for any bird finder stopping in the [Rio Grande] Valley is the Sun Valley Motor Hotel (with restaurant), just southeast of Harlingen on U.S. Route 77’, Pettingill (1960: 35) advised in a typical column.

The latter type of birding article, a natural history of a species, was often written as personal narrative but included more descriptive scientific facts. In the same issue as Thomas’s observation of the wren, an ornithologist contributed an essay on the purple-capped fairy hummingbird. The article was still a personal narrative but with a scientific orientation. ‘I was not easily convinced that, while so delicately poised in the air, the hummingbird could exert sufficient pressure to penetrate vegetable tissue a twelfth-of-an-inch in thickness’, the ornithologist wrote (Skutch, 1961: 8). Audubon published an excerpt from Rachel Carson’s forthcoming Silent Spring, another example of the scientific essay, although hers eschewed the first person and dealt with an ecological issue rather than a single species – a rarity.

The second category of article featured unusual travel destinations or natural places that were threatened by development. The wife of a chemicals executive wrote about a Connecticut garden her family had donated to the Audubon Society (Fairchild, 1961), while a zoologist wrote about the Nature Conservancy’s plans to create a large sanctuary in California (Johnston, 1961). These articles frequently employed a first-person narrative style, although a minority were written from an omniscient perspective. Some used quotes from sources but most were simply the writer’s perspective.

The third type of article featured service to the organization. This included a regular column from the society’s president and reprints of speeches and photographs from the organization’s annual convention. Articles written by Audubon Society staff directly reflected the concerns of the organization, such as an essay by the society’s director of its nature centers: ‘Perhaps by developing more nature centers, outdoor classrooms and conservation education areas, the perceptive faculty of Americans to appreciate and revere and conserve our resources can be sharpened’, he mused (Shomon, 1962: 282, emphasis in original). The magazine also covered the organization’s annual Audubon Medal, an award given to a prominent conservationist. In 1961, the awardee was Jay Darling, former chief of the US Biological Survey. Audubon ran his acceptance speech in full, which heavily praised the organization over the federal government Darling (1961) worked for:

It is of paramount satisfaction to know that wherever the Audubon Society has established a refuge it will be forever free from scalawag invasion by wildcat oil drillers …. Thank God for the irrevocable and sure-footed policies of the Audubon Society! (p. 6)

Thus, during the early 1960s as public interest in environmentalism began to grow, the content of Audubon did not resemble typical establishment journalism. The publication was, by and large, not produced by professional journalists but rather by engaged activists, scientists, and employees of the organization whose identities as writers were secondary. These writers were not grassroots amateurs – they were highly educated professionals, like zoologists and ornithologists. When they were not professionals, they were elites, connected to the Audubon cause through donations or status. The personal essay, often employing a first-person narration, was the primary vehicle for their stories. Stories rarely engaged with traditional practices of newsgathering, such as the use of sources; they also never made attempts at professional journalistic values like plurality of perspectives or neutrality. No competing voices appeared. Even stories that hinted at conflict, such as features on imperiled wildlife areas, were written in a mannerly tone. (It should be noted that the excerpt from the fervent Silent Spring was an exception, and a hint of what was to come.) Audubon the magazine during these years, with its genteel, non-confrontational content focused primarily on birds, was chiefly a promotional vehicle for the traditional mission of Audubon the organization.

Audubon in expansion (1966–1976)

By the mid-1960s, as public interest in environmentalism ramped up dramatically, Audubon began to include articles that went beyond the magazine’s traditional avian scope. One feature article, billed as ‘A Chicago executive races to view the scenic wonders of Glen Canyon just before the dam waters cover them forever’, was a journal of a vice president of an actuarial firm’s visit to the ‘drowning canyon’. ‘Truly an emotional experience’, he reported as he observed the waters rising behind the newly constructed dam. ‘It is high time for all men and women of responsibility to assert themselves in protest against this needless waste of our natural heritage’ (Griffin, 1966: 32). This article was sandwiched in with other fare more typical of previous years, like ‘Can I Count That Bird?’, an ornithologist’s advice to birders on fairness in recording species sightings (Keith, 1966).

This type of article – one written by an elite figure who was not a traditional journalist and using a value-laden, often highly dramatic personal narrative – became increasingly common, especially after the magazine got a new editor in 1966. Les Line was previously the outdoor editor and photographer for the Midland (Mich.) Daily News and a member of the Michigan chapter of the National Audubon Society. Line’s blend of journalistic experience and environmental orientation mirrored that of his most recent predecessors, former newspaper editor John Vosburgh (editor from 1960 to 1966) and writer-biologist John Terres (from 1948 to 1960). While Line made no explicit editorial statement at the start of his tenure (and rarely did thereafter in the 25 years he ran the magazine), he ramped up the magazine’s movement away from placid bird-watching narratives. Stories took on a passionate, end-of-time tone. This reflected discourse in the broader environmental movement, such as Paul Ehrlich’s (1968) apocalyptic The Population Bomb, which posited that the human race would overtake and destroy the earth in short order. ‘Blight or Noble City? A University of Pennsylvania specialist in landscape architecture delivers a blistering attack on the East Coast’s urban sprawl’, (McHarg, 1966, emphasis in original) cried one headline; ‘For American Profit and Japanese Steel, They’re TEARING DOWN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES’, shouted another (Laycock, 1971, emphasis in original).

Line also began to publish confrontational, even shocking, articles. In his first issue as editor, ‘The State Vs. The Predator’ featured a photo of a fox with its leg in a trap, its face contorted in pain. The author, a former South Dakota state game and parks employee, began the article in a dramatic fashion: ‘Lungs ruptured by deadly gas, the red fox staggered from its den, bleeding from the mouth and gasping for air. A shovel blade smashed down on the pup’s head, mercifully snuffing out its life’ (Charles, 1966: 437). Other articles took readers around the world, well beyond the organization’s traditionally American purview. Sewall Pettingill, whose long-running bird-watching column would cease without fanfare in 1969, reported from Guam, Newfoundland, and Guyana in his last months on the masthead. A 1967 issue exclusively featured articles on African wildlife. In 1973, the magazine ran an article by journalistic provocateur George Plimpton, chronicling his participation in the annual Audubon Society Christmas bird count and treating the bird-watchers more as the object of study than the actual birds.

The changes to Audubon’s content did not go unnoticed by readers. In a departure from previous editors, Line ran numerous letters to the editor critical of the magazine’s reporting, from both Audubon supporters and public figures and businesses who felt slighted by the magazine’s crusading coverage. This represented the first time in decades that overt dissent appeared in the pages of the magazine. Graham (1990) reported that internal organizational strife sometimes played out in the pages of Bird-Lore, Audubon’s predecessor. As Line’s tenure extended, he seemed to delight in annoying readers, particularly those who complained that the magazine had lost its avian focus. He ran dozens of their angry letters over the years, often juxtaposing them with other writers who praised the magazine’s growing purview. Plimpton’s article was seen as an insult. ‘I am appalled at Plimpton’s snide gibes about birders. It is an affront to all serious birders to permit such an article to be published’, wrote the chair of the Los Angeles Audubon Society (Dimsdale, 1974: 79). ‘The March 1974 issue contained 18 pages on sandhill cranes, while 80-plus pages were devoted to articles that had little or nothing to do with anything ornithological’, wrote Jeff Zervas (1974: 91); ‘The ratio should be reversed’. Line let Audubon contributor and novelist Edward Abbey (1974) respond in a mock letter that lampooned such grievances:

The May issue of Audubon has arrived and I am annoyed. Nothing but [expletive deleted] birds, birds, birds from cover to cover. Now, I am as interested in birds as the next [illegible] National Audubon Society member. I harvested my first robin redbreast with a Daisy air rifle when I was only seven years old, and I plan soon to be out gunning for the last bald eagle in the Catalina Mountains. [Material unrelated to birds deleted.] But unless us [illegible] bird-lovers make more effort to save the environment, there won’t be any [expletive deleted] birds left. (p. 91)

Line’s choice to run articles unrelated to birds reflected the organization’s changing orientation. In 1970, the National Audubon Society officially announced in an unbylined column in the magazine that it was shifting ‘from birdwatching to total environment’ and acknowledged that the society was sometimes ‘handicapped by the “bird club” image’ (Audubon, 1970). While the letters Line ran indicated some dissatisfaction with that choice, it was clearly the future direction of the organization.

In addition to allowing readers to express dissatisfaction, Line also published letters from industry figures who disagreed with the magazine’s coverage. In 1971, a paper company executive defended the mill’s role in polluting the Hudson River, describing the steps the company was taking to address the problem. ‘This project is part of a company-wide program to provide similar treatment facilities at all of our pulp and paper mills in the United States by 1974’, he wrote (Tower, 1971: 81). Another paper executive was less serene, writing that his company ‘certainly ranks as one of the most environmentally conscious corporations in the United States’, and that Audubon’s critical reporting was ‘an unnecessary rap at the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time’ (Callaghan, 1971: 82). Taken as a whole, Line’s habit of publishing dissenting voices into the letters to the editor section indicated three things. First, he was unafraid of alienating the organization’s classic base of birders, suggesting a strong confidence about the position of the magazine and the changing orientation of the organization as a whole. Second, Audubon was no longer only reaching the membership of the organization. Even corporate America was paying at least some attention to the publication. Third, it alluded to the classic establishment journalistic value of plurality, or presenting multiple perspectives. If a party felt aggrieved by Audubon’s coverage, Line allowed them space to express their point of view.

As his years at the helm extended, Line’s orientation toward norms and practices of traditional journalism increased. While just 10 years earlier, Audubon articles rarely featured interviews or sources, and certainly never featured an anti-environmental voice, the mix of articles by the end of the 1960s included classic natural histories of bird species as well as more traditionally journalistic endeavors that, while they did not capitulate entirely to conventional reporting practices, began to probe ambiguities in environmentalisms. For example, ‘The Falconer’s Paradox’ by George Laycock (1971) questioned the role of falconry in an era of environmental threat. The article presented the perspective of falconers without denouncing them and acknowledged the complex reality of attacking environmental problems: ‘There is, however, little agreement about the major cause of the peregrine’s status as an endangered species’, Laycock (1971) wrote; ‘If you want to do something for the birds of prey’, the falconers ask, “why don’t you fight DDT”?’(p. 66) Similarly, contributing editor Frank Graham’s (1973) article probed the decline of osprey breeding grounds and asked whether pollution, the boogeyman of the day, was really to blame, while allowing scientist-sources to explain the complexity of the situation. Another article, on the plight of wild horses in the West, let sources describe why the animals were viewed as nuisances: ‘The cattle are an economic unit. The wild horses are not. They serve no purpose whatsoever and must be gotten rid of, public sentiment notwithstanding’, said a Bureau of Land Management employee (Wood, 1969: 48). A feature on the founder of Pennzoil buying enormous acreage in Texas included the company’s denial that the privatization of the land was a threat to the state’s history of open territory (Neary, 1974). Thus, by the 1970s, a plurality of perspectives had become a fairly regular feature of Audubon articles.

The mix of writers for Audubon also shifted under Line’s command. While the magazine still published the writings of environmental activists and scientific experts, National Audubon Society employees garnered fewer bylines. Organizational-service articles were relegated to the back pages in a separate section, and the amateur enthusiast-type or donor-writer disappeared altogether. The author mix began to trend toward professional writers. The magazine featured the work of prominent nature writers and novelists, such as Wendell Berry and Edward Abbey, and it increased the number of on-staff field and contributing editors. Full-time journalists from national newspapers and magazines more frequently contributed articles, and unsurprisingly, these submissions included more traditional journalistic practices, such as the use of sources and the third-person narrative. Audubon had become an attractive place for professional writers to publish.

By the mid-1970s, Line’s move toward conventional norms and practices of journalism had solidified. He frequently ran letters to the editor complimenting the magazine on its accuracy and fairness: ‘I have found that Audubon presents the most objective, well-researched, and responsible articles dealing with contemporary environmental issues’, wrote one reader (Odegard, 1976: 111). Beyond that, Line made an overt call for balance and multiple perspectives in environmental reporting. After critiquing articles in other publications that lamented the decline of the grizzly bear population, Line wrote,

Perhaps [the decline of the population] is true. But it seemed time, from this desk, for a dispassionate report that favored neither side of the controversy, that searched for that badly needed true light. Gilbert, who has been writing about America’s wildlife for many years, got our assignment. Proof that he succeeded is the fact that his article probably will anger everyone involved, from bear scientists to rabid animal protectionists to government officials.

As to a personal judgment, Gilbert makes none. (Line, 1976, n.p.)

The article in question was a protracted consideration of the grizzly bear population that delved into the science, and particularly the uncertainty of science, about the bears’ range. ‘What evidence exists on the status of the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states remains essentially circumstantial and open to any interpretation’, it concluded (Gilbert, 1976: 85).

Thus, a decade after he took the helm as editor, Line had overseen Audubon’s move toward establishment journalistic professionalism. The transformation was not complete. The publication still ran advocacy-laden pieces alongside those like the grizzly bear controversy. In the very next issue, the introduction to a 63-page photo essay on Utah’s protected spaces cried, ‘The energy industry, state officials, and the federal government are prepared to offer Utah’s parklands as the ultimate sacrifice to the gods of progress’ (Ratcliffe, 1976: 11); this lament was certainly not dispassionate. Scientists, professional activists, and academics still had bylines, but they were now alongside staffers for The New Yorker and LIFE. In the strongest evidence for Audubon’s transition from a niche bird-watching journal to an important journalistic force, the magazine was awarded a National Magazine Award for reporting excellence in 1975. However, the two articles that garnered the award (submitted as a single entry) bucked Line’s trend of hiring professional journalists and relying on journalistic practice. One, written by historian Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., eschewed interviews and was instead a lengthy meditation on a proposal to seize farmland to build a canal in North Dakota; the second, on seal hunting, was written by the director of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation. This pair of atypical articles defeated finalists from The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and Vogue, placing Audubon in the firmament with national magazines (American Society of Magazine Editors, n.d.). That seal of approval from the establishment indicated two things: first, that Audubon could be considered establishment, and second, that the establishment itself had morphed along with trends in magazine journalism more broadly to consider non-traditional forms of journalism – and non-traditional journalists – to be award-worthy.