In this week's Print Tip, Margie Dana attempts to
peel away the bark and uncover the mysterious identity of the pseudonymous D. Eadward Tree, Chief Arborist of the blog
Dead Tree Edition. You’ll find he's no sap:
1. Who are you – really – and why do you write under a pseudonym?
I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out who I really am. You’re familiar with my official profile (see above). As for the pseudonym, if I had used my real name, people would assume I was speaking for my employer, which is not the case. I couldn’t very well address controversial issues related to publishing or my company’s current or potential suppliers if I revealed my identity.
Go check out the rest. (He also reciprocates by publishing his own interview with Margie
here.)
Mr. Tree subsequently asks,
Margie Dana made this statement in the interview with her I published today: "Sustainability in this field is a funny topic. It is currently not one of the hottest topics, if you follow discussion trends in blogs and LinkedIn Groups." I do sometimes wonder whether there's a genuine move toward sustainability in print going on or if it's just a few of us greenies talking to each other.
As I and others have written elsewhere (such as
here and
here, for example) there is a
bit of a movement—it’s not a massive sea change, but the efforts of companies such as those who enter our annual Environmental Innovation Awards and of course the Going Greenosphere certainly suggest that there are printing companies dedicated to sustainability. However, the business of print being what it is these days (or
isn’t, as the case may be), coupled with the baleful economic climate, trumps a lot of things, including an emphasis on the environment. When things looked like they were getting better earlier this year, interest in “green” spiked, but as things seem in danger of sliding downward again, green may get put on the back burner. But, generally printers are slow to embrace things unless they think they are losing business to others who have embraced them. It really will fall to the print buyers to drive any wholesale changes in the printing industry—but also recall that they are under the same economic pressures.
Of course, someone—anyone, I don’t care who—could decide to try to improve the economy at some point, which would be the best thing for sustainability. The more green we’ve got, the more green we can be.
