On Outrage

Fake news, Fox News, public lands, public service, literacy rates, and what all that has to do with the Forest Service reorganization, which is definitely not a “dismantling.”

What’s my job as a journalist? Is it to get the most clicks possible? Is it to earn money? Is it to create action? If so, what type of action? As the mainstream journalism business fails, as we all suffer through a presidency that gets more untethered from reality every day, and as the institutions we all rely on get corrupted, that answer matters more than ever.

I think the most clicked article I wrote during my decade at Outside was this one, which shares a popular recipe for cooking chicken breast that I’d read somewhere else years before, and use two to three times a week in an effort to hit my macros. I wrote that during the height of the pandemic shutdown, as an easy throwaway to get an editor off my back so I could get back to the important business of losing my mind to anxiety about the end of the world. That’s incredibly depressing to someone who prides themselves on producing deep, insightful work, but one of my old editors still called me “the chicken breast guy” when he couldn’t remember my name at another colleague’s wedding a few years back.

That’s relevant here for a couple reasons. For most of the 21st century, our job could be reduced down to something so simple it was insulting: get clicks. The primary business model was display advertising, which would be sold at set rates of impressions per-thousand views, or “CPM” in industry parlance. A typical banner ad on most outlets would go for something like a $10 CPM rate. So, if I could write an article that got 500,000 views, that’d make the publication $5,000 from that ad. There were usually 3-4 banner ads on any given page, with their prominence determining where their rate sat north or south of that $10 standard.

At one point, the race for clicks got so reductionist that Gawker Media began paying its journalists based on the clicks they generated. I hate to admit it, but I’m actually the person who broke that system. Way back when I was the first road test editor at Jalopnik (this was long before the Thiel-Hogan lawsuit which destroyed that company, Jalopnik is unreadably bad in its current form) I ran a video of the nazi-themed orgy Max Mosley put on with the aid of five hookers, and the traffic resulted in such a large bonus that the company was forced to transfer to a steadier salary-based system.

Up until the pandemic, the formula for creating traffic like that was pretty simple. So long as you had a website that Google and Facebook liked, combined with a name that their algorithms thought had “authority,” you could push publish on a catchy headline and those platforms would do the rest of the work. I’d say 500,000 views or so was probably my average across the dozens of stories I published monthly.

But the problem was, only a small percentage of those readers stuck around, and made any given publication their go-to. So, when first Facebook, then Google realized that they could make more money keeping all those eyeballs inside their walled gardens, rather than referring them outwards, traffic cratered. Not just for me, but across every publication on the Internet. And at 5,000 views, that CPM model only generates $50 in ad revenue. Across the last few years, the business model that publishing had relied on since the advent of the information superhighway has been completely broken.

Beyond the ability for journalist to have jobs, and all the fun stuff like access to healthcare and financial stability that goes along with those, that collapse may be healthy for journalism in that the fundamental work has changed from getting clicks, into providing value for your readers. That model is epitomized here on Substack, which promises to directly connect readers with writers, even if the audience for dog-camping-meets-public-land-policy isn’t yet large enough on this platform to support a full-time wage.

But that transition also creates another problem for journalists: all of us have 25 years of practice and momentum behind the skill of getting clicks, and too many of us find the proposition of providing value for readers challenging and new.

On the flip side of that coin is the compounding problem that the majority of Americans are approaching functional illiteracy. My sister-in-law Tori, who is both smarter than me and also a writer, likes to patiently explain when we’re discussing media that more than half of adults in this country read below the 6th grade proficiency level, and more than 20 percent read below the 5th grade level, at which point they are considered illiterate. Her explanation for our current political moment? Fox News is written at a level 5th graders can understand.

My AI assistant (I use Anthropic’s Claude) tells me that this newsletter is written for people who read at least as well as a 10th grader. Reading level statistics start to get less clear once people stop pulling off their shoes to count beyond 10 digits, but it looks like you’d need to be in the top 20 percent or so of readers nationwide in order to walk away from an article like this one with some comprehension of what just happened to you.

What do those two problems add up to? Desperation, and an audience largely unequipped to distinguish fact from fiction.

We obviously see this routinely with Fox News and its fifth graders. But it’s worth identifying an example for purposes of discussing outcomes. Anyone with any reasonable level of reading comprehension looked at Nick Shirley’s “exposé” about day care centers in Minneapolis and laughed it off. When he wasn’t allowed to film inside those, it should have been obvious to anyone watching that was because it is the express job of those centers to protect kids from incels like Shirley, and not some grand conspiracy about reptile aliens visiting earth to steal our social services and give them to ancient Egyptians, or whatever it is Shirley claimed. And yet that still resulted in our government dispatching masked thugs to that city in order to murder American citizens in broad daylight.

Will claims that the administration is “dismantling” the U.S. Forest Service, which have spread widely (and even been plagiarized) following a misleading article making that claim on More Than Just Parks, cause similar trouble? While it’s tempting to dismiss that discombobulation of facts as innocent enthusiasm for the continued existence of trees, I worry that it could amount to something more harmful.

The general public only has so much attention to devote to niche causes like public lands policy, and stoking outrage when it’s unjustified risks exhausting already limited attention on issues that don’t matter. Worse, sucking up that attention by lying to the public risks forever turning them away from public lands advocacy, when they realize they’re being lied to.

A good example of that is the Great American Outdoors Act, which the pro-public lands world seems very enthusiastic about crediting to Senator Steve Daines (R-Thank God He’s Retiring), but which was actually introduced by John Lewis (yes, that John Lewis), and while full of good intentions, was co-opted by Republicans to greenwash their image ahead of the 2020 election, and is being used by billionaire creep/Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in an attempt to give free money to states that they can use to acquire public lands then sell those off at a huge net loss for taxpayers. The reason you don’t read that from the pro public lands world is that they expended so much energy trying to convince everyone they’d finally made a real achievement that they painted themselves into a corner, and can’t admit they were taken advantage of. And in failing to admit that, they’re allowing Burgum to pursue that plan without significant pushback.

Just so it’s clear even to fifth graders: that’s bad.

A lot of the lie about USFS being “dismantled” seems to be predicated on the public’s false perception of the Forest Service’s job, which can understandably get conflated with that of the National Park Service in the public’s imagination. But where it’s NPS’s job to preserve our nation’s natural treasures for the enjoyment of the public, USFS exists for the primary purpose of managing resource extraction.

This misunderstanding, and the lies that foster it, are evident in another example of disinformation being put forward by the outlets and advocacy groups that claim to be pro public lands. All of those worked themselves into a tizzy last year when news came down that the Public Lands Rule was being repealed. That was less a rule and more a memo, because what it set out to do—make conservation a “use” of Bureau of Land Management land on the same footing as extraction—is not something an executive agency can simply declare, it’s something that requires an act of Congress, since we’re talking about changing actual laws here.

And that misunderstanding is perhaps the best possible framework for achieving actual understanding of what the Forest Service actually does. While yes, the agency conducts research into forest health, climate change, invasive species, and other feel good stuff, its primary function is to permit industrial uses of public land—grazing, mineral and energy extraction, and timber harvesting. And that knowledge likely changes how you feel about that agency being “dismantled,” which is still very much not something that is happening.

I already addressed much of this when I first tried to get ahead of this disinformation last week. But since it’s spreading so widely, let’s further address a few key points:

Claim: “BUT THEY’RE RELOCATING THE AGENCY TO SALT LAKE CITY SO THAT MIKE LEE CAN DO SOME UNSPECIFIED EVIL!!!!1!”

Reality: The plan calls for 130 of 270 headquarters staff to be relocated from Washington D.C. to Lee-land sometime between summers 2026 and 2027. Note those dates for later. USFS employs over 30,000 people.

Claim: “BUT FIRE!!!!1!”

Reality: This administration has been using wildfire to try and justify logging since Ryan Zinke was Interior Secretary. As was true then and is true now: logging exacerbates wildfire risk everywhere but immediately adjacent to homes, where industrial logging does not typically occur. They’re also trying to eliminate the NEPA process designed to identify and mitigate wildfire risks and science as part of the industrial permitting process, which is very stupid and something we should all be mad about, even our friends in the oil biz should be mad about it. The re-org plan does nothing about fire, and claims to leave all wildfire staff and operations untouched.

Claim: “BUT THEY’RE ELIMINATING ALL THE RESEARCH STATIONS!!!!1!”

Reality: The plan calls for “consolidating” the 57 current research stations into 20, and creating a new central research management facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. While yes, I think it’s safe to assume anything this administration does is evil, I must point out that we don’t yet have any idea what research programs, if any, will be cut. You can find a full list of USFS research programs and projects at this link. USFS does a lot of important work on stuff like fire behavior modeling and climate adaptation. It also spends a lot of time and money figuring out how to increase yields for the extraction operations it permits. Maybe they can use some of that spare capacity to help their new neighbor Mike Lee figure out how to regrow his hair.

Claim: “BUT BLM DID SOMETHING SIMILAR DURING TRUMP 1 AND THERE WERE ONLY 3 EMPLOYEES LEFT!!!!!1”

Reality: This is an example of agency resiliency, and a lesson that we can repair what is damaged. And no, there weren’t only three HQ employees left, they only managed to actually get three working out of that Exxon break room they tried to transfer BLM operations to, even though they had two years to execute. Ultimately, the move did cause 287 of 328 headquarters staff to resign. BLM employs about 10,000 people.

That gives us the best indication of where this is headed. Re-organizing USFS management away from its current regional offices and into 15 state offices, “consolidating” research locations, and asking 130 headquarters staff to move to SLC likely is an attempt to terminate experienced managers who cannot simply be fired in the usual manner. And all of this will cause a significant amount of institutional knowledge to leave the agency. But we do not know currently who, how many, or from what areas USFS might lose that institutional knowledge. We could be talking about a couple dozen, or a couple hundred people. And yes, it is shitty that people who have dedicated their lives to public service will have to lose their jobs this way.

Does any of that realistically sound like a “dismantling?” Does any of that really sound like something people should be getting all riled up about, over more important issues like the unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act to break the permitting process on public lands?

Ultimately it’s that lack of perspective and insight that’s the real issue here. Sure, this re-org is probably a net-negative to the Forest Service’s ability to conduct business. But again, that business is primarily permitting extraction and other harmful uses of public land. And that re-org is not taking place in a vacuum. It’s happening even as USFS, like BLM, is being handed the single biggest crisis in its history by Republicans in Congress who don’t seem to understand how laws work.

That first-of-its-kind use of the CRA to break the management plans governing permitting processes on public lands remains the bigger story. And, it might just deliver salvation for our public lands.

Let me make this as simple as possible, you can make your own bad joke about illiteracy this time though:

• Using the CRA to invalidate Management Plans calls into question the legality of every single management plan and permit written on BLM and USFS land since the CRA became law in 1996.

• That legality may have to be settled on a case-by-case basis for each plan and each permit in federal courts, which already have a years-long backlog of cases.

• Operations governed by unsettled permits and plans may have to cease operations until judges rule on each.

• USFS and BLM will need to go back to the drawing board for every management plan and every permit written since 1996. The CRA prohibits the use of anything “substantially similar” to replace any agency rule it’s used to eliminate, so this is very much a case of starting with a blank sheet of paper.

• At the same time that is happening, the administration is trying to fire experienced staff at these agencies, and impose its own incompetent management on them. USFS chief Tom Schultz, for instance, lacks any experience of any kind at the agency.

• No plans, no permits = no drilling/logging/mining grazing.

• Should issues persist long enough, industry will continue pivot away from costly, uncertain public land operations and towards expanding operations on private land and abroad. This is already happening with the oil business, despite Republican lip service to working in benefit of that industry.

• Industry itself will call for boosted agency budgets and staffing to speed the process of rebuilding permits and plans once the dust settles. Since impacts from all this will begin to be felt later this year, we’re talking FY2027 and beyond, after all this stupidity puts Democrats back in charge of the House, and maybe even the Senate.

• Trees get hugged, birds sing, double rainbows for everyone.

The problem with double rainbows for everyone is that those scare no one. And without a fear mongering headline, this article isn’t going to break through the broken algorithms, and convince the distracted public to pay attention. Writing this may not bring me clicks, but it does hopefully help readers of this newsletter become better informed. At least the few of you capable of getting through 2,700 words without going cross-eyed.

Also, I have to add one last note for organizations like Patagonia, REI, the Conservation Alliance, and all the others that are piling onto this moronic “dismantling” narrative: Jesus Christ guys, do better.

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, plan outdoor adventures, and prepare for real life, and who promises he’s less salty in real life than he sometimes comes across as on the Internet.