Who Owns America's Wild Places? Public Lands and the Fight for Truth
- colin7931
- Sep 23
- 30 min read
Welcome to Open Container, where today we're discussing one of the defining features of the American experience: our public lands.
Host Doug Schnitzspahn kicks things off with a personal reflection on how these wild places are woven into our national identity and the critical roles they play, not just as recreation spaces, but as battlegrounds for conservation, resource extraction, and cultural connection.
Joining Doug is Chris Keyes, former editor in chief of Outside magazine and founder of RE:PUBLIC, a new non-profit newsroom dedicated to covering the politics, people, and future of America's public lands.
Together, they explore what makes the American public lands system unique in the world, how it’s managed, and why it stirs such passionate, bipartisan support.
From the legacy of Indigenous stewardship to the modern pressures of population and politics, the episode asks: Who really owns America's wild places, and how do we ensure their future?
00:00 Hope in Public Lands
04:35 "Finding Healing on the Road"
07:34 Freedom of Camping on Public Lands
12:58 Bipartisan Support for Public Land Conservation
13:53 Legacy of American Public Lands
19:30 Journalism's Advertising Dependency Crisis
20:44 Journalism: Navigating Bipartisan Challenges
25:42 Nonprofit Media: Partnership Over Competition
27:45 Media's Role in Legislative Awareness
31:30 "Advertising Threatens Editorial Independence"
33:47 Long-Form Journalism's Enduring Appeal
37:13 Nature's Restorative Powers: Access Essential
Click here to learn more about RE:PUBLIC.
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Episode Transcript:
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:01.120 - 00:00:06.000
Public lands are woven into our identity. They're part of what it means to be American.
Chris Keyes
00:00:06.320 - 00:00:19.600
Unlike most countries where land is often either privately owned or managed by the state, we have this incredible network of parks and monuments and national forests and all intended to be preserved.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:20.000 - 00:06:59.720
I remember when I first started working for the Forest Service, they gave me a land use map and I looked at it. I was like, this thing is more of a migraine than a map. You know, big decisions can happen without anyone knowing about them.
Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer, and overall lover of the outdoors.
I've fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I can run a mean Pulaski.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation, policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community. Let's get some at the end of every episode of this podcast, my final question to guests is always what gives you hope?
What gives me hope is public lands.
And what gives me even more hope is the massive uprising we recently saw to protect these lands when greedy and cynical politicians like Utah Senator Mike Lee proposed selling them off to wealthy tech bros instead of leaving them for all of us to enjoy.
Whether you're Republican, Democrat, hunter, vegan, tree hugger, or simply a wanderer on this earth who loves time and wild spaces, public lands matter. I take joy even just driving past them, knowing these places are ours. There's a power in knowing they can't be fenced off or kept from us.
Yes, they can be managed, and we can argue about how that should be done, whether for resource extraction or as wilderness left untrammeled by humans. But the very idea of wide open spaces, deserts, forests, far off mountain ranges and prairie feels essentially American.
Of course, these lands also provide vital resources, something we must all acknowledge. Yet those resources can be managed responsibly in ways that benefit everyone.
Too often we see sweetheart government deals with companies not even based in the US Extracting resources with little regard for the rest of us. But that's beside the point. What I really want to talk about is how deeply important public lands are to the American consciousness.
Of course, we can't talk about American lands without also talking about the people who lived here for millennia before this place was ever called America. Indigenous people with deep and ongoing connections to these places.
Recently, while dropping my son off at Cornell University in New York, I drove along Lake Cayuga and thought about the Haudenosaunee, the tribes who not only lived on that Land historically, but still live there today. When I looked at the lake and the cornfields, I felt the memory and history of the Cayuga nation infused in the landscape.
Yet we almost never bring this up when we talk about place, especially on the East Coast. As we shape public lands policy, it is essential to bring native voices to the table.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of the Bears Ears National Monument. Created, then shrunk, and now once again under threat.
Bears Ears is public land, land that was protected while also including native voices in its management. That makes sense because the descendants of the people who built the historical sites protected here still live here. They still come to these lands.
They still have a right to shape how they're managed. Public lands are under attack now more than ever, which is strange, given how deeply Americans love them.
That became clear when people of every political persuasion rose up to protest against their sell off. In an age of polarization, it was stunning to see such unity. But that's because public lands are woven into our identity.
They are part of what it means to be American. I know this from my own story. I first came west when I was broken inside, lost in bartending, alcohol, drugs, and relationships I wasn't ready for.
But in New Mexico, I felt the pull of the desert and the pinyon juniper forests, the slopes of Mount Taylor. I had an old 1979 Yamaha 1100, a four cylinder, more like sitting on a car engine than a motorcycle.
I rode it to hidden places, wilderness areas, long stretches along the Rio Grande, and even to visit a friend at Laguna Pueblo. Simply being out there healed me. The land helped me find my way back.
It made me realize who I was without the confusion and darkness of society pressing in. And it committed me to living better, more in touch with the earth and how it made me feel.
Soon I was working for the Forest Service, building trails, hiking every foot of the Tobacco Root Mountains, the Madisons, the Gravelies, digging water bars, drinking straight from streams, building bridges and fighting fires. I grew close to the land, and I never felt better in my life. I skied, I hiked, I climbed.
And I learned how ecosystems worked, how wild animals depended on these spaces. When I came back to the world of laptops, phones and mortgages, I was better equipped.
I was more compassionate, more grounded, and ready to build healthier relationships. That's my story. Each of us has our own, but public lands shape us in ways that make Americans different from people in any other country.
They give us the rare freedom of belonging to the land and finding ourselves on it. There's plenty of disagreement about who we are as a nation and how we govern ourselves. But there is also something we agree on.
Public lands are an essential part who we are. My guest today believes the same thing.
Chris Kais rose up through the ranks to serve as the editor in chief of Outside magazine from 2007 to 2022, and worked as general manager of Outside Inc. S outdoor group, including titles such as Backpacker, Ski, Yoga, Journal, and Climbing.
His latest project is Republic, a non profit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated solely to covering the policies, people and forces shaping the future of America's public lands. So let's open the container with Chris Kaid. I want to know what is uniquely American about the concept of public lands.
Chris Keyes
00:07:00.200 - 00:08:57.080
Maybe the best way to answer it at first is a personal story. So when I was in college, I worked on a trail crew in the Frank Church Wilderness Area in Idaho.
That was a spectacular summer, one of the best summers I've ever had. And I grew up in Portland. And the trail crew met in Salem that summer. And we drove to the work site.
And along the way, at some point, our crew leader pulled the van over down a forest road and down another left turn, down another forest road and finally to a flat spot. And he said, we're going to camp here tonight. I said, we can just, we can just camp here. There's no campground or anything. What's going on?
And he's like, yeah, it's national forest land. We can camp wherever we want.
Even though I had done a fair amount of recreating on public land at that point, that was the sort of aha moment for me of this freedom that we have on these lands that belong to all of us. And I think that's what makes it uniquely American is this idea that these vast tracks of natural landscapes are, you know, they're held in a.
In a trust for people, and they're not owned privately or exploited solely for profit. And in the US this concept is enshrined in the legal framework that, you know, balances conservation and recreation and resource use.
Unlike most countries where land is often either privately owned or managed by the state with limited public access, we have this incredible network of parks and monuments and national forests and all intended to be preserved for the public's use and enjoyment. If you go to Europe, you just don't experience that kind of freedom of these vast tracts of land.
A little bit more like, well, living in Texas, where the vast majority of lands are private, you have to rely on a benevolent landowner to let you on and access Their land, which can be very confining. And so I think that makes it really special.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:57.460 - 00:09:08.260
Yeah, I like that Confinement. Right. We don't like to be confined, don't want to be fenced in as Americans. Didn't realize you worked on the truck crew.
I spent six years doing the same. I think it's the absolute best thing anyone can do with their life.
Chris Keyes
00:09:08.340 - 00:09:21.140
You know, if I didn't have a family, I would go back to it. To be out in nature for that extended period of time.
I think we were out for eight weeks and we had one resupply, but by and large, we were just out on this crew, and it was incredible.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:09:24.580 - 00:09:29.600
So how much public land do we actually have in the US you have the stats on that? I know, with this new. New project.
Chris Keyes
00:09:30.080 - 00:10:35.640
Yeah. So there are 630 million acres of federal public land. There's a whole, whole bunch of other where you get down to the county and state level.
But specifically speaking about the federal land, it's 630 million acres. It's maintained and overseen by, you know, a variety of agencies. You've got the Bureau of Land Management, which is by far the largest.
I think they're just shy of 300 million of those acres. The U.S. forest Service, National Park Service, the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service.
And then you have about 28 million acres that are controlled by the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. But by and large, it's those big four. The BLM, U.S. forest Service, National Parks and Fish and Wildlife Service.
When you talk about how they're managed, each of those agencies has a little bit of a different mandate for how they manage those lands. So you can't really speak globally to how all of those 630 million acres are intended to be managed.
But most of them have a recreational component to them. Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:10:35.640 - 00:10:47.000
And it's fascinating that the BLM owns the vast majority of them. I think that might be something that most Americans wouldn't be aware. Most Americans don't even know what the BLM is.
They think it's a BLM movement, not the land agency.
Chris Keyes
00:10:47.480 - 00:11:16.320
It's also one with the broadest mandate to really balance multiple uses.
The BLM's leadership's mandate is to balance grazing and mining and energy development and recreation and conservation all under one large management plan. So that is where you see probably the most frequent battles over these lands.
Because it's such a broad mandate and you have so many resource groups that want access to those lands.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:16.730 - 00:11:33.850
And even from the resource extraction standby, I think it's important Right. That it's public. Right.
The whole idea was that we'd have this land, even the resources on it, as something we could all use if we needed it, not as something for individuals to profit on and let us know how much of it we could use if we wanted it. Right?
Chris Keyes
00:11:34.090 - 00:11:47.050
Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's where you get.
I mean, some of these incredible historical moments, like some of the gold rushes we've had, and you just have, you know, thousands of miners just heading out into public lands to try to stake a claim on these resources.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:47.550 - 00:11:53.310
And you can still do that, if I'm correct. Right? You can still do that. Yes, you can find gold.
Chris Keyes
00:11:53.470 - 00:11:55.710
I haven't done it recently, but yes, you can.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:56.750 - 00:12:07.470
That might be your post. Outside option. So who ultimately then does public land belong to? And who gets to say how it gets used?
Chris Keyes
00:12:07.790 - 00:12:40.240
Well, it's all Americans that it belongs to.
But ultimately, you know, the decisions are made at the federal level, agency by agency, and depending on which party is in power or which leadership is in power and what their governing philosophies are and what they want to emphasize, that's going to control how these lands are managed.
You know, there are legislative frameworks and management frameworks for all of these lands, but depending on the administration, they can kind of steamroll some of those management lands or follow them to the letter of the law.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:12:40.400 - 00:12:57.540
So we just saw this massive grassroots uprising of people from the left and from the right. Hunters, environmentalists speaking up about stopping the sale of public lands. That was in the big beautiful bill.
What does that tell you about the popularity of public lands beyond political affiliations?
Chris Keyes
00:12:58.500 - 00:13:42.800
What is so unique about the idea of conserving these lands and keeping them public is it is such a bipartisan issue. Overwhelmingly bipartisan.
So if you look at the voting public, and most polls Show More than 70% of Americans think conservation should be central to the management of these lands and that recreation should be and access should be central to the management of these lands.
With this movement that you saw where for one of the first times in a long time, public lands policy made it into the national conversation, the reason I think it was so loud and clear was because you had people on both the right and the left using their voices to protect these lands.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:43.190 - 00:13:53.030
And why do you think that is? What is special about public lands that it can actually break the biggest political problem we have, which is polarization, Right?
Chris Keyes
00:13:53.030 - 00:14:57.850
You know, that's a really good question. I think it's part of it is just the legacy of these lands that's been built over 200 years.
That idea of freedom to roam and freedom to access these places is really ingrained in Americans and especially out west where the majority of these lands are.
You know, I think when you get down into particular issues about preserving a, you know, attractive land, is it going to be wilderness area, is it going to be broader use areas? Then you start to have more conflict around these lands.
But in terms of keeping them public, I think that ethos of being able to roam on these lands and access them is so American and ingrained in America that it's really hard to push back against that.
And it's unique and interesting because by and large, we have this free market legacy as well, where private land and privatization of corporations is how this country was built. So it's unique that we have this public trust simultaneously coexisting with this legacy of privatization.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:58.250 - 00:15:14.470
We love our political privatization. Right. We want business to be run that way. But it seems like we also love individual freedom, and that's what public land can give us.
You can go out there, you can piss wherever you want, you can sleep wherever you want. And what's more American than that?
Chris Keyes
00:15:14.470 - 00:15:27.990
Yeah.
Ever since that opportunity that I had, you know, when I understood that you can go anywhere, basically on a national forest road and camp, I don't think I've been to a. A designated campground since, because there's just so much area to explore.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:28.470 - 00:16:11.280
But we are seeing that change in a way. Right? As. I mean, this is one of the reasons, I think, why your project's so important right now and what's happening right there is becoming.
Populations in the west are growing, People are spending more time outdoors. We're getting more and more pressure on public land.
So there's a lot of spaces, I think, where you used to be able to disperse camp anywhere, where that's actually going away. That's how much use we have on public land right now. Right. It's like my grandfather did this. I think we often.
There is a mindset still that the way we can treat public lands, the way we get out there can still be the way it was done fifty years, a hundred years ago. But the way we use public lands and the way we manage public lands are both have to be different now because of the way we interact with them.
Chris Keyes
00:16:11.520 - 00:17:19.340
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, you know, a hundred years ago, we did not have the $1.3 trillion recreation industry that, you know, by and large depends on these public lands.
So you had much more of an ethos of extraction, frankly, after the civil War, A lot of soldiers coming back and rounding up cattle in Texas and starting the first cattle drives and using public land in that manner.
And the mining boom in the later 1800s, and then with the advent of the oil industry and those extractive industries, it wasn't really until, you know, the 40s and 50s where people really started to access those lands for recreational purposes. That's obviously come so far in those last 50, 60 years. And the recreation industry is exploding.
And I think historically those extractive industries have had just a lot more influence and sway in Washington.
The power economically of the recreation industry has just largely been ignored and not had an equal seat at the table when making decisions about how to manage these lands.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:23.180 - 00:17:31.190
I would love for you to tell us a bit about your new project, Republic Lands Media. What is it and why do you think it's going to work?
Chris Keyes
00:17:31.190 - 00:19:18.950
Because we're in the audio space. I always feel the need to say it's re. Colon. Public, which. Which means in regards to public lands. And so, yeah, I.
Over the summer, I founded a independent nonprofit media entity that's going to be exclusively covering public lands issues. And we are launching in the second week of September. I could not be more excited about this.
I've spent 25 years in journalism, and I've seen, you know, in the. Especially in the last five years, just the decline. Contraction of our journalism industry in the media industry.
And at the same time that I'm seeing these unprecedented threats to our public lands, it just seemed like a natural corollary for me to bring my passion for public lands and my passion for journalism to this new entity. Why do I think it will work? Because I got to feed my kids, so it better work.
No, I. I am encouraged that at the same time that we've seen so much contraction in journalism, I mean, by some reports, we have 75% fewer journalists than we had two decades ago, which is just astonishing when you think about that statistic. The one bright spot I think we've really seen is in nonprofit media. And that segment of media is really exploding.
There's now, you know, more than 500 entities and newsrooms that have a public nonprofit model. The existence of all those say to me, well, if they can do it, I can do it. It gives me hope.
And I think people are coming around to understand how important journalism is to our democracy. And so there's a more. There's a more of a willingness, I think, to support entities like mine and like others that are in the nonprofit space.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:19:19.370 - 00:19:29.930
It seems to make sense since journalism itself is supposed to be unbiased, that it shouldn't be tied to advertising or tied to be having to make money.
Chris Keyes
00:19:30.010 - 00:20:20.580
So I started in magazines in 2000.
That was sort of shortly after magazines created the first original sin of journalism, which was they put all of their eggs in the advertising basket and stopped really building their relationship with their actual readers and getting reader payments. That really led to the situation that we're in now.
And so when you have journalism completely dependent on advertising, well, advertising, the market is cyclical and when the market's up, it's great.
But when advertisers are holding onto their dollars and not as willing to as much willing to spend, it's harder and harder for these entities to survive, especially in an era where they're not getting as much revenue directly from their consumers and readers.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:20:20.580 - 00:20:44.480
I think there's something interesting too there about good journalism. The type that you're going to put out can be uncomfortable, right? It can be things people don't want to hear.
And we're also in this ecosystem now when people are not getting journalism in front of them and instead they're just getting what they want to hear. How can you reach the people who don't want to hear what you might. Some of the things you might be telling them that you're reporting on?
That's the truth. Yeah.
Chris Keyes
00:20:44.960 - 00:22:17.230
Well, that is a. That's the challenge we all face. And I don't know that I have a simple answer for that.
I will say, going back to what we were talking about earlier, the fact that this is such a bipartisan issue gives me hope that I'm going to be reaching audience on both sides of the aisle. In the media environment that we live in now, if you're doing good journalism, you're pissing people off.
And so to say that you're going to be perfectly nonpartisan and everybody's going to be happy with the balance of your stories, it's an impossible target to hit. I think you want internally to aim for that goal and to look at all sides.
But ultimately it's also our job as journalists to tell you what we found and to tell you what that means. I have a great writer friend here in Santa Fe, Abe Streep. He works for ProPublica.
When the mike Lee proposal for a massive sell off of public lands was on the Senate side and still being debated, part of the rationale given was that this was an opportunity to fix our housing crisis. And so I think it's journalists role and this is what Abe did to not completely Discount that idea right out of. Right out of hand.
I mean, the advocacy groups who are for conservation are. That's their job to say, hell, no, we're not going to sell a single acre.
But it's journalism's job to look at that and say, now, is this a fix for public lands? Now, how would that work ultimately come to some conclusions? And Abe, you know, ultimately saw that there wasn't a lot there.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:22:17.230 - 00:22:33.840
There. Has your work on public lands made you rethink in any way your thoughts on how they're managed or how they should be managed?
Or have you seen opposing viewpoints that you've understood better now from what you've done?
Chris Keyes
00:22:33.920 - 00:23:58.530
One of the things I stress to people when I talk about this is that I'm not a public lands expert. If I have expertise in anything, it's journalism. And I. And I, you know, say that without, you know, being conceited.
But I've been doing this for 25 years, so I should be an expert by this point. And so I believe in storytelling and going about telling stories the right way.
I expect that the stories that we do are going to change my mind on some topics, but I can't think of anything in particular that we've encountered in these early stages that I've thought, huh, we should do that differently. I think what I'm really aiming to do is keep a very open mind.
And when you have these fast, fast tracks of land and all kinds of land, there are a lot of use cases.
I do come to this topic with some priors, and one of which is I believe that the recreation industry is a huge economic driver and that historically it has, like I said earlier, has not had an equal seat at the table and has not been unified with a singular voice to fight for conservation and recreation on these public lands to the degree with which I have a viewpoint. I think that viewpoint will be coloring some of our journalism.
Is that the belief that that has to be an equal consideration when we talk about the future of these lands?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:58.530 - 00:24:14.470
Yeah, I guess you're starting with one very important tenet, which it seems that everyone else has, is that we should have public lands. They have a right to exist, which, oddly enough, you know, we've been fighting against.
Right now, that seems to be the basis for anyone in this discussion. Right.
Chris Keyes
00:24:14.870 - 00:25:15.730
The outdoor industry has always struggled to speak with one voice and to kind of amass its power and its influence in a cohesive way. And I think that's starting to change. But we still have a lot to work to do.
If you look at the oil and gas industry, they don't have a problem speaking with one very clear voice. The recreation industry is a very, very broad coalition.
So you have a lot of, you know, individual use groups and entities that are formed around specific passions like fishing and hunting and hiking and boating.
And it's only in the last decade that you're starting to see these groups kind of coalesce into, to a larger movement that has, that can speak with one voice.
And that's why you got legislation like the Great American Outdoors Act a few years back all the way through, because it is a bipartisan issue and it is because there was a lot of work done behind the scenes to unite these user groups into one passionate idea.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:25:19.170 - 00:25:42.700
You have a great reputation as a features editor and I know you're a wonderful editor with, you know, beautiful long prose and essays and reporting and magazine stories. But we're also going to get some kind of nuts and bolts journalism in here too.
Is that right where we're going to get kind of stuff we'll find in high country news or you know, real reporting on how management works and the nitty gritty of public lands management, are we not?
Chris Keyes
00:25:42.780 - 00:27:13.280
One of the things again that attracted me to the nonprofit model of media is that it's a much more of a partnership driven model than a competition model. In some world like what I'm building could be seen as in competition with a high country news.
But our goal in the first year is to produce 10 to 14 deeply reported investigative pieces and then to partner with existing brands like a high country news like Atlantic Monthly, like an outside where I started my career, to reach those audiences right out of the gate. Just to be clear, like that's our kind of emphasis and focus in year one.
But to what you're alluding to over time, we want to build out our capacity to have regional reporters that are covering these public lands issues from a more regional and local perspective than just a national perspective. Because you've got these big national management debates about whether it's selling off public land or the roadless rule.
But then you have a lot of local things happening that don't reach the national level but are very important to new Mexicans. Here I live in Santa Fe, so, or in Colorado.
Our other goal with this, this newsroom is to support local journalism so that the Denver newspapers and the new Mexican newspapers have the capacity to tell these stories just to support them and, and to have local journalists who can do these stories.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:13.440 - 00:27:45.250
I, I thought about that when you talked about we Lost. Did you say we lost 75% of our journalists recently? Right.
And I wondered when you said that number, how many of those were those, you know, local journalists from these local, you know, papers we've lost?
And some of this stuff that seems like, oh, the worst thing you could possibly do, right, Going to city council meetings and reporting them or talking about zoning laws, zoning laws or something like that. But that stuff's really important when it comes down to it, because otherwise it just happens.
Big decisions can happen without anyone knowing about them. Even on a local level, you know.
Chris Keyes
00:27:45.250 - 00:28:48.930
On a national level.
Even before Mike Lee got his proposal out into the Ethereum, there was a proposal on the House of Representatives side that was a little bit smaller in scope, but came out of the Utah delegation. Utah and Nevada delegation. Every day I would go to the New York Times, kind of our national paper of record, and look for coverage of this.
And there wasn't any.
It wasn't until Mike Lee's proposal that this became part of the national conversation and a lot of the national publications started to cover this in earnest.
That's where I come from is that I feel like unless we can flood the zone with more journalists covering this space, more and more decisions are going to be made without the public's input or even knowledge that these things are happening. And I'm just one entity, I can't fix that problem.
But that's what I'm trying to throw out of this is more coverage, more great reporters who are telling these stories and making sure that the public is aware of what's happening to their public lands. Because it's all of ours, it's our public lands. And Americans need to know what's happening on them.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:52.610 - 00:29:11.650
What you're creating, you know, creating journalism like, you know, I think a lot of the reaction to Mike Lee was, you know, came from social media. Right? But people on social media can, can create buzz, but they can't create reporting at this level. They can't have facts.
They, they need that stuff as ammo, really. So you need to provide the ammo for, for these reactions.
Chris Keyes
00:29:11.650 - 00:29:43.710
I think I'm dating myself maybe even by saying this, but I just truly believe there's still a place for long form journalism, long form literary journalism. And that's not the only kind of work we're going to be publishing, but as I said, it's going to be our focus in year one.
And the reason for that is I've seen in the course of my career, it's those stories, not the daily drip of coverage and daily drip of information. But it's these longer, really thoughtful pieces that have the impact.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:29:44.350 - 00:30:01.550
That's great.
This is what we can expect from Republic then, is that we're going to get the kind of stories we really used to savor in Outside, especially in some of your time at Outside. These stories that, you know, you can spend a long time reading and that can really look at all ends of an issue.
Chris Keyes
00:30:01.790 - 00:30:16.470
When you say all ends, like you can't do that in 500 to a thousand words. You need 5,000 to 10,000 words to tell some of these stories and to really unpack all the issues involved.
So, yes, we are committed to telling those longer stories.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:16.710 - 00:30:34.070
You know, I think we still have readers out there. Right? There still seems to be a thirst for this kind of information for people.
And I think even with young people, you know, I far too often hear young people almost disparaged, saying they don't read or they don't want this. But there does seem to be a human need even for long form storytelling, right?
Chris Keyes
00:30:34.390 - 00:31:17.270
Yeah, I think it's, it's all of the above when it comes to journalism. I have two teenagers, they get their news from all kinds of sources, including YouTube shorts.
And some of that's actually really good information and there's nothing wrong with it. But I think I've also seen with my daughter in particular, she, she loves long New Yorker stories. She loves to sink her teeth into those stories.
So, yeah, I think that it's overblown, this idea that this next generation is not interested in long form.
I do think that there can be an effect on people's attention span from the short form video that is dominating social media and our Internet experience. Now that's all the more reason to stay dedicated to this craft and to offer an alternative.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:21.110 - 00:31:30.830
What was the, the kind of the hardest lesson you took away from your time at Outside when it came to reporting stories? Really getting deep into journalism on a.
Chris Keyes
00:31:30.830 - 00:32:34.860
National level to be a little careful with what I say.
But you know, I think that there's no question, and I think almost any journalist who's been working for the 25 years that I have has seen an erosion between the ad side and the edit side. And that, that speaks directly to what I was saying earlier about the media becoming so dependent on advertising.
And so when you run up against a story that is going to be upsetting to a potential advertiser, there's going to be some blowback from your sales side. And I think at Outside, we successfully navigated those challenges pretty well. But it's.
It was exhausting to have to defend great storytelling and important storytelling that might anger a potential advertiser. So that of all the challenges that I faced in my career, that was the biggest one.
And frankly one of the, one of the reasons that drove me into nonprofit media to not be dependent on, on advertising, to really maintain our total independence is what it's. That's like my guiding light. That's. It's my non negotiable.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:35.420 - 00:32:44.060
What is your kind of five year dream of where Republic will go and what we'll see in five years when we get our information from you?
Chris Keyes
00:32:44.540 - 00:33:32.080
In five years, I would like Republic to be the authoritative voice of public lands issues in America. Thought of as a thought leader in the space. We're starting with journalism, but nonprofit media also survives on creating other revenue streams.
I don't know exactly what those will be yet, but a lot of media companies have had success with events.
I can certainly see a thought leader event around public lands that brings people from all sides of the issue to a conference to speak about these ideas and share ideas and share debates about these issues. And I want Republic to be the brand that brings all of that together.
And first step is to kind of establish our credibility in the space with premium storytelling.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:32.320 - 00:33:47.120
I think another thing you probably learned from your time at Outside too, you were there, you know, like it or not, you had to figure out how to get move into a digitization of what you were doing and work on digital platforms. How has that taught you things that you're going to put into play with Republic?
Chris Keyes
00:33:47.440 - 00:35:21.310
The first thing it taught me, when I first became editor of outside in 2007, there was really a kind of conventional wisdom in media that there wasn't a place for long form journalism anymore, that nobody wanted to read 5,000 words on a computer screen. And that turned out to be completely wrong. Some of our biggest traffic drivers were on Outside. Online were our long form journalism.
As long as you create a space that is beautiful to read in and not cluttered by a thousand ads and pop ups and things, people will spend the time in the digital space. So that's one thing I've learned.
But the other thing is, and this is what's so difficult with fractured media, is that you have to be in all places or you have to decide I'm not going to be in all places, but all the places that I'm going to be in we're going to be the best at. And I think that's what we're going to have to Slowly build up. We don't even have a Facebook page yet. We don't have Instagram.
And one of the reasons is because I don't want to go into those spaces without having a thoughtful presence and a presence that's going to be meaningful to people, that's going to make. You're going to make it more challenging to get the word out. And eventually we will have a presence in those space.
But I think when you ask about challenges in the media environment, I mean, there's a new platform that you can get at storytelling out out in every month.
And the challenge is figuring out which spaces are you going to show up in and where is your brand best reflected and how are you going to reflect your brand in those spaces? That's going to be my challenge for this five years.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:25.070 - 00:35:28.510
What's exciting you the most about moving into the next five years?
Chris Keyes
00:35:28.670 - 00:35:52.790
The learning curve. The abject terror that I go to bed with every night about this project. It's very motivating, that terror.
Putting this thing out into the world after sort of four months of it gestating in my mind and in conversations with other people, and now finally launching our website and putting it out into the world and saying this is a real entity. It's terrifying, but it's. It's also incredibly exciting.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:53.030 - 00:36:16.800
Well, I was certainly excited to hear about it just because I do think there's a need for this kind of reporting. And beyond that, it seems to give a legitimacy to the idea of how important public lands are.
You know, I think it's something they often say in a national political debate. People don't talk about conservation, they don't talk about public lands.
But it feels like we can legitimize this issue as important in the same way we've done with outdoor recreation.
Chris Keyes
00:36:16.880 - 00:36:55.250
Yeah. And I think journalists from everywhere can do a good job covering this.
I think being in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and living out west, where the majority of these lands are, is also important because the majority of media is on the east coast and there are a lot of public lands on the East coast, but people do not interact with these lands on a daily basis in the way we do out here in the West. So it's.
I think it's important to have an entity like this that is situated here in the west, where these topics are top of mind for everybody all the time in a way that they just aren't in, say, Maryland or Massachusetts.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:55.410 - 00:37:12.530
Do you see our relationship with public lands as essential to even. Even to being human?
Did they give us something you know, something we can't get digitally in a world that's quickly being built up where every answer should be digital or online or from our phone. Is it a basic human need we get out there?
Chris Keyes
00:37:13.010 - 00:38:32.160
Absolutely. I mean, I think there's plenty of research to back that up. There's plenty of science that show the restorative effects of nature.
I don't think we need any of that science.
Anybody who's spent significant time outside knows that their blood pressure goes down, that they are more able to relax and the longer that they are out in nature and away from their screen, it just has this feeling that you can feel as a human that you don't need the science to tell you that this is good for you.
The challenge we have is making sure that all Americans have the access to these spaces and the knowledge of the therapeutic benefits of being in the spaces so that it's part of our existence as humans.
We're always going to have a digital side to, you know, the horses out of the barn in that, in that sense, like we're always going to have our phones, Our phones are always going to be a part of our life.
In fact, I took my daughter on a seven day backpacking trip and using the ONX platform and all of a sudden I realized like halfway through the day I'd been looking at my screen like every half hour to get keep us on course. I wanted to chuck the thing, but I think ultimately it's that balance.
You can have a digital diet but also balance it by spending restorative time in nature. And I think that's essential.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:38:36.000 - 00:38:42.400
And what's some time been out there that's really changed you, that's really made you feel closer to something beyond yourself.
Chris Keyes
00:38:42.720 - 00:39:49.110
I think it was that summer spent in the Frank Church wilderness. Honestly, I had never had, and have never had since that sustained level of being outside.
We would work all day and then we would get back to our camp and I would strip down to my bathing suit and I would jump in the river and I would just grab a rock like I was a salmon swimming upstream. I remember just the, we had worked an eight hour shift and I was just totally gassed and I would do that and feel completely revived.
The feeling that I had at the end of that summer, going back to home, it was, it was fleeting. It was like a 48 hour feeling of just this unbelievable sense of peace that you just can't get in our modern society. It's just impossible.
I'm always craving that feeling. I'm chasing that Feeling it's hard to get when you have a job and you can't get it, you know, two months out there.
But that's what I'm chasing is that that feeling of complete connection to, to the natural world.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:49.860 - 00:39:56.100
Should we be scared? Should we be worried that we're going to lose public lands, that we're going to lose the ability to make these connections?
Chris Keyes
00:39:56.420 - 00:40:21.620
Absolutely, we should be terrified.
As I was saying, being terrified about this project I'm launching, terror and being afraid is incredible motivator and I think that's what you saw this summer. You saw people really afraid that there was a lot on the line.
If we're not afraid of what can happen to these lands, they'll be gone very quickly if we don't use our voices. So yes, we should be afraid.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:40:21.700 - 00:40:37.380
Well, I think Republic is going to be an incredible advocate really and resource for thinking about these lands and making them part of our lives, no matter where we live in the country. In the meantime, could you tell us how we can sign up for support and find Republic?
Chris Keyes
00:40:37.780 - 00:41:09.900
Republic land is our URL and you can sign up for our newsletter. There's and you can start reading our stories.
I should emphasize that the website as it exists now is more of a here's everything about our newsroom and where we're headed. It's really about the organization than more than it is. Here's our storytelling that's unrolling now.
I've made a bunch of assignments and those are I've got reporters out on the field, but those stories won't really roll out until October. November going to be totally free.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:41:10.490 - 00:41:30.330
That's great.
Well, it's been incredible to talk to you and as I said, I have such respect for you and your career and even more so for what you're doing now and terrifying yourself with this new project. And I will give you our last question that we give everyone as the last question on this podcast. And it is simply, what gives you hope?
Chris Keyes
00:41:31.690 - 00:42:00.740
Seeing my daughter fall in love with the wilderness. I took her on a seven day backpacking trip in the Weminuche wilderness in Colorado.
She was already passionate about backpacking, but that was the first time I'd been able to experience it at that length with her.
Seeing just how much that experience affected her just gives me hope that this feeling of being in nature, like I said, is universal and that this next generation is going to carry the torch.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:01.230 - 00:42:12.430
I love that. Chris, thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you even more so for all the work you've done in your career and for what you're about to launch now and everything it'll do for public lands.
Chris Keyes
00:42:12.750 - 00:42:20.110
Well, thank you so much for giving me this platform to talk about Republic. I couldn't be more excited about it and I hope your listeners come check us out.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:21.870 - 00:43:00.190
Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rock Fight llc.
Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you you're listening to us on and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com learn more about the New Republic outlet and sign up for the newsletter at Republic Land.
If you want to learn more about the history of America's public lands and how our national identity is tied to wild spaces, I highly suggest you start by reading Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind. Our producers today were David Karsad and Colin True, art Director direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some.
Thanks for listening.
