Last year's barrage of green media coverage began in January with a BusinessWeek cover on the glory of the environmentally conscious corporation. Nine months later, the same publication opted for the "yeah, but..." angle with its "Little Green Lies" cover. (Not surprisingly, BusinessWeek just forecasted a green backlash as the first of their top ten predictions for 2008.) Backlash or no, media are shaping the green agenda in a profound way. It's important to look at how these players operate, both as a way to understand the risks they pose, and to uncover opportunities to use them to get your story out and build your brand. By Andrew Winston

Let's take a quick look at the ways media companies are tackling green, from increasing coverage in general to launching dedicated and expensive new magazines and TV channels. Ironically, media companies are not particularly far along in greening their own operations they've fallen into the trap of "we don't have a smokestack, so we don't have environmental issues." Some are starting to understand their own direct footprint (upstream to the impact of paper mills, for example), and a few are leveraging their larger role as influencers of customer behavior through their content.

Green Business "Tips"

As one media study says, "more than half of all the green business stories published since 2000 were printed in 2007 alone." And that's just business section stories the data shows that sustainability as a topic across all content areas has ballooned as well. But this measurement is an understatement. Take the Wall Street Journal almost daily there's a story that has green business ramifications, even if it doesn't say "green" or "sustainability." They might cover the ethanol boom and the effect on corn prices, or talk about the economics of mining as resources get harder to find and community pressures rise. Green business is just becoming business.

The Rise of the Special Report

Going beyond the general increase in coverage, many media properties have created recurring special sections focused on green. The New York Times has published three "Business of Green" sections (see the International Herald Tribune's site with this content here) in the past 20 months. And the Wall Street Journal, never to be outdone, ran three sections in 2007 alone. This kind of special coverage raises the profile of the topic from niche to mainstream.

Dedicated Green Coverage at NBC

NBC Universal went a step further with its week of green, which was wide-reaching, from CNN news coverage to green stock picks on CNBC to primetime shows building in green story lines. The very funny "30 Rock," which takes place at a fictionalized NBC, introduced GreenZo, a character that was supposed to be the GE/NBC mascot (played as a scolding taskmaster by David Schwimmer from "Friends"), and called on Al Gore to play Al Gore as green superhero. The week could have seemed like purely a gimmick (which of course it was in part), but it was extremely well done and made the case effectively that green is a part of all aspects of life. But it was a shrewd business move for NBC, which saw the opportunity to position itself with advertisers and consumers and took it.

New Green Media Properties

The ultimate vote of confidence in a topic from a media company is a new media property, such as a magazine, website, or TV channel (even industry trade magazines are starting green editions). I spent much of my business career in the media business and I know that these launches can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. These are not small endeavors, and the media landscape is crowded already. But we've seen a new channel from Discovery Communications and a run of new magazines like Plenty, Verdant and, I might argue, Fast Company, which has shifted over the last year to a very heavy green content bias, from regular coverage like this story to posting scorecards on companies' triple bottom line performance. Dedicated news and content web properties like MSN's new portal, GreenBiz, Environmental Leader, and of course our own SLM have cropped up and received venture capital dollars to support growth. Not all media properties survive (remember the Internet boom mags Red Herring or Business 2.0?) but many will last and continue to influence people (Wired is going strong). The green media winners will continue to change the landscape and influence what consumers and business customers are hearing every day.

Remember one thing: Media companies are businesses like any other, and if they are creating special sections or new media properties, they believe the ad and consumer markets are there to support them a powerful vote for the reality of the Green Wave.

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Andrew Winston is founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and co-author of the best-selling Green to Gold. Read his "Eco-Advantage" blog here.

Note: This article has been adapted from Eco-Advantage Strategies, Andrew Winston's regular newsletter on how to build value and competitive advantage by innovating for sustainability.