Q&A: Re:Public X Rock Fight

To promote this week's launch of RE:PUBLIC, Christopher Keyes sat down with Colin True, cofounder of Rock Fight, for a wide ranging conversation about outdoor media, where he got the idea for a public-lands newsroom, and the, um, joys of commercial media. Below is an excerpt of their conversation.

COLIN TRUE: All right, let's start with the big question. What is Re:Public?

CHRIS KEYES: Well, the short answer is, we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom, and we're dedicated exclusively to covering the policies and the forces shaping America's public lands. And the longer answer is, it's the big career turn for me after 25 years in outdoor journalism. This is a passion project for me that I am just getting off the ground.

So a lot of people know you from your time as editor in chief at Outside magazine. What is it about the public lands that now interests you primarily?

When I look back at my career, I think of myself as working at the intersection of public lands and journalism. The outdoor industry is much broader than just public lands, but it's completely dependent on access to these lands. And when I left Outside, I was really fascinated by the nonprofit business model. Maybe that's the 25 years of being abused by the for-profit model [laughs]. There's something really intriguing about the independence that you can have in a nonprofit model. And when I thought about the issue that I would most be passionate about covering, it was public lands. I'm 51, so I can start talking about the back half of my career. I like the idea of putting it towards something I'm passionate about.

Why did you decide, instead of a personal blog or Substack about public lands, to launch a whole organization that's dedicated to nothing but news and stories about public lands?

Well, primarily it's because of the incredible contraction that we've seen in media. And you have a media ecosystem that is completely overwhelmed by the pace of change and the number of things being proposed. From a national media perspective, public lands are kind of, say, number 19 on the list of topics that everyone is trying to stay on top of. While there is great public-lands coverage out there, I will argue till I'm blue in the face that we do not have enough journalists covering this space. 

And you ask why do we need an organization covering this solely? I think there's something almost liberating about being solely focused on one topic. It's helpful to define ourselves by what we're not covering as much as it is what we are covering.

What kind of work can readers expect from RE:PUBLIC?

So those who know me and have worked for me for a long time know I am an unapologetic, die-hard supporter of longform, literary journalism. It's the kind of storytelling that I know has the most impact out there. So our first year is really focused on commissioning 10 to 12 investigative pieces that are going to have high impact—and not necessarily covering the daily drip of public news that's coming out of Washington. So that's the focus of year one. We're going to be starting with a newsletter, and eventually a podcast, but really on those big investigative pieces.

Why'd you choose the nonprofit route?

Because I spent 25 years in for profit media. I'm laughing—but you can only laugh. It's been a tough, tough ride in commercial media. I've had to lay off quite a few people in my career, and, if that's ever easy, you better look yourself in the mirror. I think so much of it is because the mainstream media has become completely dependent on advertising, and it's so much harder to capture those dollars in this era.

One of the bright spots in media these days is nonprofit media. There are more than 500 news organizations now that are nonprofit underneath this umbrella organization called the Institute for Nonprofit News. Not all of them are thriving, but a lot of them have carved out a really sustainable business model in the space through a combination of foundation support, individual donors, and then their readership. And that's really attractive to me. 

What happens in media in the coming years and decades should definitely be interesting to track. And I think this will be something, hopefully, that rises to the fore.

Yeah, that's the hope. The pitch I make out there to potential funders is that there are two main ways to have an impact on the conservation world. You can fund specific programs that are designed to protect, say, these specific acres in the Oregon high desert. Or you can fund public education. 

And that's essentially what we are. I think you need to fund both, but to preserve for the long run the value of these public lands, you need an educated public. You need an agitated and animated public that is aware of the issues and armed with information about the challenges that we face and about the importance of these public lands. And without a strong media and with strong journalism out there, that's not possible.

If you were advising brands or retailers how to engage with conversations around our public lands, what would you say to them? What would you want?

Well, by and large, I think the industry really used their voice effectively, particularly in the first Trump administration, fighting things like the downsizing or elimination of Bears Ears. You had a lot of brands coming out in favor of protecting these national monuments. I would say, and this is anecdotal, that brands have not been as brave with using their voices this time around.

But if I were to talk to those brands, I would say there's really very little downside to being vocal about this issue because it's one of the few bipartisan issues that we have left. If you take a position on any issue, you run the risk of angering one constituency or another. But who is the constituency for these outdoor brands? It's the people recreating on these lands. There's very little downside from standing up for public lands in my opinion.

Absolutely. We had Paul Hendricks on from the Conservation alliance to talk about the Brands for Public Lands campaign a few months ago. It's probably time for a check in because it does seem like there was a bit of a splash and then it kind of has quieted down a bit on that front.

You're right: Brands for Public Lands was a great example of brands using their voice. I think it was one of the rare times that public lands issues penetrated the national conversation. There was a lot of rallying around opposition to Senator Mike Lee's sell-off proposal. But there are larger threats out there right now that just aren't being talked about to that level. I look at the “roadless rule” rescission, and that could have just as big of an impact as some of these land sales proposals. 

It's hard to tell compelling stories about policy, but that's our job as journalists—to find ways in that are intriguing and that are going to reach somebody. How do we make this topic compelling and interesting on a daily basis so that people are paying attention and getting educated versus just tuning out the noise?