HEMP ARTICLE UNDER CULTIVATION

IN THE ECOLOGIST

The September 2008 issue will feature hemp and the book Hemp for Victory, so I am excited. It will be a good time time for hemp businesses to advertise their shop, here are their contact details:

Advertising@theecologist.org or call 020 7422 8100. Click here for site quoting ad rates.

It is of great advantage to have both a full scale article on hemp and some business contacts so as to engage the general public. Too often there is a curt and innacurate article with no contact details. The Ecologist has worked hard to help the hemp movement, last year they gave us free advertising for a hemp shopping bag made by the Hemp Shop in the UK. Their reporters have been quite keen to work with us, and go out of their way to keep their ear to the ground, as when Cynthia McKinney, potential US Green candidate for President, visited London last year (she was boycotted by many of the larger publications, including the Guardian). I still remember her cooking up porridge with hemp seeds whilst Mark Anslow and freelancer Elizabeth Mistry looked on.

Current circulation runs at 20,000 per issue, 10 issues a year. Readership is quoted at ten times that figure, understandably as many copies circulate in libraries and institutions. The magazine tends to have a longer 'life', as more readers tend to keep back issues, a fact reflected on my own shelves. It punches above its weight as far as publications go; writers such as Mark Anslow, Jeremy Smith, Pat Thomas and Zac Goldsmith, to name a few - influence opinion in environmental circles. It has an online presence, and an e-newsletter with 25,000 signed up.

So let's support them in their act of support for hemp. The more the general public sees of hemp products, the more we can advance this cause. For smaller companies, and perhaps those not so UK/EU centred, I might suggest some collective ads in the Green Pages section. We are hoping to have a hemp products show here in London, maybe early '09, so keep that in mind too.

And as always, I am happy to do a post about any hemp business here on the blog, it is free, but to be objective it does not reach 20,000 a month. Not yet, but we are working on it. Contact me at cotingas@hotmail.com if you have such information and/or low res images to post.

In the meantime, make sure you at least get a copy of the hemp article in this next issue of the Ecologist and send copies to environment editors so they follow suit. A good idea would be to copy their article and send along your own synopsis with details of your business so they contact you for an article. Look for an upcoming post here with a list of hemp articles in the press, there is always at least a small one appearing here and there on a weekly basis, and many of them are noted here with a link, as will be the upcoming piece in the Ecologist.