The Gray Lady, aka The New York Times, announced last week that it is shuttering its “Green” Blog, which is a shame as it was a very helpful resource to which I would link often. At the same time, the Times has closed its Environment news desk. There has been no small degree of consternation from around the green blogosphere, but I imagine, like any publisher’s discontinuation of anything, the reason was lack of site traffic. Still, environmental news crops up elsewhere in the Times, largely in the weekly Science Times section, and the also-excellent Dot-Earth blog remains, so that’s some good news. As we here at Going Green can attest, environmental news and blogging is a tough sell, both for sponsors and readers, largely, methinks, because it’s a topic that is inherently user-unfriendly. It’s all unremittingly bad news, isn’t it? And while so is something like 99% of all news, the difference is that environmental news is chock full of reminders of things we are doing wrong or need to change, a virtual “tsk tsk” for readers. Who needs that, really? (Which is why your blogger tries to inject a bit of humor into the proceedings here, which doesn’t always go over particularly well.) I think there are stories that need to be told, both in terms of sustainability within the printing industry and without. But maybe we can do a better job of presenting these stories without sounding judgmental or—gasp—self-righteous.