S3E12: Our 50th Episode
Taking the opportunity of a milestone to ask for your help
In the 50th episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast, I recap why we started the podcast and what our hopes are for the months and years to come.
Here’s the deal:
It’s no secret that the news media are facing an existential crisis. News outlets are shutting down, journalists are being laid off, and news organizations are making severe cutbacks in budgets for research and reporting.
This is disastrous news for the American deserts. Despite the fact that North American deserts make up the most intact ecosystem on the continent with hundreds of species found nowhere else, our arid lands are coming under increased pressure by the solar and lithium mining industries, by corporations that would deplete ancient groundwater to support unsustainable sprawl, by destructive forms of recreation, and many other threats. And without a thriving press, many people who might otherwise take action to protect the desert won’t know there’s a problem.
We at the Desert Advocacy Media Network, non-profit home to the 90 Miles from Needles Desert Protection Podcast, want to change that by bringing in-depth coverage of desert issues to the public free of charge. But we need your help.
Millions of Americans love our deserts and want to help protect them. Sadly, the sources many of us turn to to stay informed about desert issues are drying up:
In 2023,10 American newspapers went out of business each month, and that pace has quickened since.
More than 2,600 journalism jobs were lost last year, with hundreds more journalists laid off in the first quarter of 2024.
Since 2005, the United States has lost a third of its newspapers and two thirds of its journalism jobs.
Even those news outlets that remain have become increasingly inaccessible to the average desert-loving news consumer. Paywalling news is a reasonable reaction by struggling media outlets, but those paywalls still block the vast majority of readers from staying informed about the desert issues they care about. Making matters far worse, social media companies have turned their backs on news. Facebook and Google have tweaked their algorithms to make it harder for news companies to get their information in front of readers. Google is now threatening to block user access to news sites to retaliate for attempts to legislate fixes to its siphoning news media dollars into its own coffers. Twitter, until recently the single best social media source of breaking news from skilled journalists, has become nearly useless as a source of accurate news of any kind.
Non-profits like ours have been working to fill the gap. There are a handful of wonderful outlets covering desert news on a local or state-wide basis. We strongly support their work. But the Desert Advocacy Media Network is the only non-profit media company specifically working on environmental coverage across the entire desert.
Since 2022, D.A.M.N. and 90 Miles from Needles have covered desert environmental stories from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles to West Texas, on topics ranging from the flaws in the IPCC’s coverage of climate change in the desert, to appreciations of desert wildlife, and tips for staying sane in the face of bad news. We’ve done all that with zero paid staff and an annual budget under $15,000. We know how to get things done for very little money. And we provide everything we do to the public, free of charge.
But we’ve only accomplished a fraction of what we’d like to do. There are dozens of desert environmental issues that merit their own podcast series rather than a single episode of 90 Miles from Needles. There are skilled, passionate reporters in the desert who would like nothing better than to provide us with their investigative journalism. We need to get our work out in front of activists working to protect the desert and people who live in it. We should be advertising in desert newspapers to reach new listeners and readers. We could be producing daily email news updates, story maps, print magazines and books. We could be working in that large portion of the desert that lies south of the Mexican border, and providing reports in Spanish as well as English.
Long story short, we want to do more to promote the idea that deserts are unique and irreplaceable treasures worth defending. But we can’t do it without help.
That’s where you come in.
Your donation of any amount will help us reach the people we want to reach, and to cover the stories we want to cover. We’ve made it easy to chip in in amounts from modest to generous, either one-time or on a recurring basis.
Click this link, or text the word “Needles” to 53-555, to help us do the important work we want to do. You can also donate by check sent to:
DAMN
PO Box 127
Twentynine Palms, CA 92277
Your contributions are tax deductible, and every dollar raised goes to help us elevate the voices of people working to protect the desert.
I cannot thank you enough for your support. The desert faces unprecedented challenges this year. Together, we can boost public awareness of those challenges and help keep the deserts thriving.
¡Adelante!
Chris Clarke
Executive Director
Desert Advocacy Media Network
Host, 90 Miles from Needles; the Desert Protection Podcast
This newsletter is a project of the nonprofit Desert Advocacy Media Network. D.A.M.N. also produces the 90 Miles from Needles desert protection podcast and Letters From the Desert, an email newsletter by desert writer Chris Clarke.