Never one to mince words, H.L. Mencken maintained that the function of journalism is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted."

In the American West, public lands are afflicted, and public lands ranchers, succored by federal welfare subsidies that annually total $500 million across the country, are comfortable. The 20 largest welfare ranchers - a group that includes five billionaires - control more than 20 million acres of public lands.

Though loath to admit it, the few ranchers who are truly afflicted are plain evidence of a patent truth: Even with federal handouts, public lands ranching in the arid West is an irrational way to make a living and an unconscionable way to "love the land," as ranchers are wont to say.

And yet, while less than 3 percent of America's beef comes from public lands ranchers, 90 percent of the streams in the West are ravaged by misguided, mismanaged grazing practices. While no town in the West derives more than 2 percent of its employment from public lands ranching, fisheries are destroyed, wildlife habitat degraded and recreation areas trashed by public lands grazing across the West.

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world," John Muir once wrote. Small wonder, then, that hunting, fishing and birding are shrinking; that passerines, sandhill cranes and bull trout are declining, threatened or endangered; that 38 wolves in Idaho have been killed since they were reintroduced to the state in 1995.

If the responsibility of the media is to comfort the afflicted, then it is the charge of the environmental community to lead the media to the afflicted - in this case, the victimized public lands of the West.

WWP's achievements and authority as a conservation monitor warrant national attention, and it's one of my jobs to see that we get it. While increasing coverage in Idaho's press only reinforces our profile, the public lands battle won't be won through media that endorses a governor who refers to wolves as "flesh-eating carnivores" (sic).

How do we engage the national press to live up to Mencken's mandate? Here, I trust, are some of the ways:

In two months we've built a national media directory that numbers 127 individual contacts. Eleven news services also reside there. Every reporter, editor or free-lance writer in the directory now receives news of every action we take.

We've also registered WWP in the affiliate program of the Environmental News Network, an international, Internet-based news service. Under the program, we post all of our news on ENN's home page at no charge. The website sees more than 100,000 visitors a week.

I've carried forward from my tenure at ENN an association with Environmental Media Services for our work at WWP. With headquarters in Washington, D.C., and offices in Seattle and San Francisco, EMS is a vital liaison between environmental groups and national media.

News of our work also travels to the Society of Environmental Journalists for publication in its newsletter and circulation through the SEJ Tipsheet.

We've expanded our website, coordinating new content through web designer Jacqueline Harvey. A full section devoted to WWP's Greenfire Preserve, captured in words by Stew Churchwell and images by photographer Teresa Tamura, is our newest addition to the site.

We're also expanding our newsletter. The value of Watersheds Messenger is twofold: media resource and fund-raising tool.

Several projects in our strategic media plan are permanent works in progress. As news occurs, we want to produce longer feature stories to supplement our standard releases. We started this practice with the wolf lawsuit story.

Our running editorial dialogue has escalated in the local media. In July alone, six WWP editorials or comments were published in newspapers across the state. Our goal is to spark the same production from reporters and editorial writers on the national level.

Full media kits are in the works. Budget permitting, a new WWP brochure will soon move from conception to production. We have high hopes (and competitive bids) for a WWP documentary designed to serve at least two purposes: fund­raising events and media conferences at Greenfire. Yet to come are field tours and watersheds workshops for reporters; surveys and opinion polls for circulation to the media; and greater WWP presence at national conferences, including the annual SEJ convention.

It's been a busy two months. Whatever strides we've made, greater challenges remain.

"As the free press develops," Washington Post columnist Walter Lippmann once wrote, "the paramount point is whether the journalist, like the scientist or scholar, puts truth in the first place or in the second."

The homogenization of American society breeds complacency in much of the free press. In the not-so-brave new world, Mencken's mandate has new urgency. Our job is to ensure that it is heard.

Keith Raether, director of media and public information for WWP, comes to the organization from the Environmental News Network in Ketchum, Idaho, where he served as news director for the Internet­based news service. A journalist for 27 years; Raether worked as a columnist and features writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as arts editor and columnist for the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News and the Albuquerque Tribune, and as a copy editor on the desk of Upstream International in Oslo, Norway.