What is the future of
the Christian presence in Canada? How dependent is it on church buildings? What is the role of service to others? That was the topic
of discussion in May when representatives from various Canadian Protestant
denominations met in Winnipeg.
Read about that discussion in my recent Free
Press column.
The negative impact of colonization on Indigenous people in the Americas is known only too well. So is the role the Roman Catholic Church played in it. That includes what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery — the idea that by “discovering” the Americas, colonizing countries like Spain and Portugal could claim Indigenous land as their own.
But the story is more complicated than most people realize — and also incomplete without noting opposition from those in the Church during that age of discovery and conquest from Dominican priests and the Vatican itself.
That included a Papal Bull issued in 1537 that declared Indigenous people must not be deprived of their freedom or lands. This remains the official position of the Roman Catholic Church — it was affirmed in 1987 by Pope John Paul II when he visited Canada.
Read my recent column on this topic in the Winnipeg Free
Press.
In 2018, the Winnipeg Free Press announced it wanted to do a better job of engaging the various communities in Winnipeg. Did that include the faith community? I decided to find out.
As the faith page columnist since 2003, I knew that people in the faith community were disappointed by religion coverage by the Free Press. They appreciated the faith page on Saturday., But if there was news about religion in other parts of the paper, it usually involved bad news about a priest involved in scandal or someone blowing things up in the name of God in a far-away country.
The normal daily life of people of faith, including the many positive contributions they made in Winnipeg and around the world, was mostly absent from the newspaper.
After the paper made the announcement, I met editor Paul Samyn and then-publisher Bob Cox. I affirmed their desire to better serve the various communities that make up Winnipeg. And I told them one community they could serve better was the faith community by establishing a faith beat with me as a freelance reporter.
Paul and Bob said they would like to do that—but they had no money. “What if I go out and raise it?” I asked. If I could do that, they said, the Free Press would do it.
After about 10 months of visiting various faith groups to invite their support, the Religion in the News Project started in March, 2019. The first article through the project was about Father Sam Arenziano, who was being honoured for a lifetime of faithful service to the city’s Italian Catholic community.
That story, by Brenda Suderman, was on page one with a photo. I told people: “There’s a priest on the front page of the Free Press—and he’s not even in trouble!”
It was a joke, but it underscored the goal of the Project: To make sure there was a regular, fair and balanced view of faith in Winnipeg. Not just news about the bad things that happen in the world of religion, and not only on the faith page on Saturday—but all through the week in all sections of the newspaper.
Since that time, over 1,000 news articles about local faith have appeared in the Free Press, written by me and, until she retired in 2023, Brenda Suderman. The stories were about people, congregations, organizations, charities, conferences, events and more. They appeared in all the sections of the paper. (Except sports! I wrote one sports and faith story, but it didn’t appear there.) They are also all available free of charge on the Free Press website.
Today, the Free Press is the only daily media outlet in Canada with a
faith beat. (And still the only newspaper with a Saturday faith page.)
The next phase
Since I am getting older, I knew I couldn’t do this forever. And I also didn’t want to take up space that could be filled by a younger person. But how to transition the beat to keep it going?
As a semi-retired person, I could afford to do it on a freelance basis. But not many younger people could do that. My goal was to find a way for it to keep going and become part of the Free Press in a more official way,
That’s when I wondered if the partnership the Free Press has with The Narwhal, an environmental magazine, could be replicated for religion. Through that partnership, the Free Press and Narwhal share a reporter who writes about the environment. The partnership is supported by the Winnipeg Foundation.
I reached out to editor Paul Samyn, suggesting that Broadview Magazine—a magazine about spirituality, justice and ethical living—could be that partner on the faith side. He agreed. I then contacted Jocelyn Bell, editor of Broadview; she was interested. After that, I reached out to a friend at the Winnipeg Foundation; he said they were open to an application for funding.
Over summer and fall 2025, meetings were held to see it if could work. An application was made to the Foundation. An MOU was signed between the Free Press and Broadview. The Foundation granted some funding and Josiah Neufeld was hired to replace me. And now here it is—ready to go!
For me, it's been a meaningful seven-year journey. I have met many interesting people and learned many new things about different religions. Along the way, I also made many good friends. It has been a privilege to do this work.
And you can be part of it! If you believe religion is a topic that
should be covered by the media, you can help launch this new partnership between the Free Press and Broadview into the future by making a tax deductible donation
to the Project.
As I read and talk to people about how AI is going to change communications, I hear a lot about how it is going to change or eliminate jobs.
I hear less about how it is going to change the way we communicate. But that is just as important—especially when it comes to non-profit websites.
Currently, the main driver of website creation is how to make it visually appealing so it is attractive, intuitive and easy for people to use—and to make the donate button easy to find.
Another goal was to make it easy for Google to find, so you would come up on the first page and deliver people to your website.
But what if people no longer need to go to your website to find out who you are and what you do? What then?
Welcome to Google Zero.
Google Zero, also known as People Zero, is the term used to describe what could happen—what is happening—because of AI like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude.
This is how it works.
These days, if someone needs information about your organization or cause, many ask AI about it. AI then scans all the information available on that topic on the Internet and delivers an answer.
Or, if they ask Google, they get the answer at the top of the page from Google Gemini.
The requester, having found the information they sought, is done. They don’t need to visit your website. They never see your donate button, have an opportunity to subscribe to a newsletter, or learn about any other neat or important things you are doing.
They are done, satisfied. Goodbye.
That’s Google Zero.
With Google Zero, Google is the final destination. It’s not the gateway to other websites, lie your website, as it has been in the past. It’s the same with other AI.
This matters for non-profits. It also matters for journalism, since news sites are also getting fewer visitors. And fewer visitors means fewer advertisers, or advertisers not willing to pay much for being on a media website.
It also surrenders information sharing to Google or AI; they may get it right, or they may not. And they may not provide any of the nuance that is important for a story or campaign.
And—importantly for non-profits—it can prevent them from building relationships with people who seek information, prevent them from guiding visitors to information they might not have seen otherwise, and also prevent them from subscribing to a newsletter or donating. (Yikes!)
Media outlets are already dealing with this reality as search referrals and website visits decline significantly.
To summarize, Google or People Zero happens like this:
1. A person asks AI a question.
2. The AI pulls information from many sources.
3. The AI generates a synthesized answer.
4. The user receives the answer without seeing the original website.
What does this mean for communicators?
First off, it means designing websites for AI—not just for people. After all, if most people are using AI to find information, you want AI to be able to find you easily.
Of course, you still want your website to look good. But the visual appeal isn’t as important as the content—when it comes to AI. AI doesn’t care what your website looks like.
To find out AI is looking for in a website, I asked: AI! (Who else?)
According to ChatGPT, a website that helps it find information:
We are at the early stages of this change in Internet behaviour. There is no telling where it will go, or how fast. But one thing is clear: AI, in some form, is here to stay. Now is the time to start thinking about how your non-profit can adapt to it.
It’s been a long time since I posted to this blog! Almost five years. That’s mostly because my attention has been elsewhere as I developed a religion beat at the Winnipeg Free Press and Canadian Affairs, and dedicated more time to journalism.
But media relations still comes up, like it did this morning when a friend asked for some advice about how to deal with the media. I mentioned by book Making the News: An Essential Guide for Effective Media Relations, saying I would send him a link to where it can be found online. (It’s been out of print for years.)
The book was written in the late 1990s, and went through to more printings (with two different publishers). The last edition was published in 2006.
The goal was to help non-profit groups which had few resources do a better job of telling their story with the media.
It has chapters on what is news, rules the media lives by, how to write a press release, interviews, press conferences, crisis communications, etc.
Although the essential message is timeless, it was last published before the arrival of social media—so you won't find much about that in there. (Maybe one short mention.)
And the media is very different today, too. It’s not as pervasive or influential as it was back then. But it still reaches millions of people and has a role to play.
Although long out of
print, the book can be accessed here
on the Internet Archive—for free!
A year after the pandemic was declared, how are some Christian communicators doing?
That was the subject of a recent water cooler webinar sponsored by the Canadian Christian Communicators Association.
“The workload ramped up significantly,” said one person, who works for a denomination. “Suddenly, everyone wanted to put things online.”
That was the right thing to do, he said, but the communications department was not staffed to accommodate all of those urgent requests.
Another communicator said he got “roped in” to helping colleagues at his office with their Zoom needs—setting up and managing webinars and meetings. He was happy to help, but it was not in his job description.
Another person echoed
those sentiments, noting that at her office there was a sudden upswell in online
meetings. Of course, everyone looked to communications for help, but
nobody suggested taking other things off her desk.
“I felt really burned out by December,” she said. “I needed a mental health break.”
2020, she added, “was one long scramble. I was always flying by the seat of my pants.”
With everything across the country online, the editor of a national denominational publication noted she couldn’t use the usual response for why she couldn’t attend them all—she didn’t have the time or budget.
But with the travel costs now zero, she found herself struggling to say no to everything the denomination wanted her to cover.
“There were so many Zoom meetings I could have been going to all of them all the time,” she said.
Worse, attending online meant not being able to take advantage of those important serendipitous hallway conversations that not only provide precious breaks in day-long meetings, but often provide interesting story opportunities.
A concern for another editor is what will happen to legacy—print—media when the pandemic is over.
Everyone knows print has a short shelf life, he said, but the pandemic may have accelerated its demise. He added so far nobody seems to be giving that much thought.
For a couple of communicators, the pandemic shut down all of their projects. This gave them a chance to review communications and come up with new plans to be more strategic.
“The pandemic gave us time for some conversations about what content we wanted to make,” said one. They could ask questions like “What do we pull back on? What can we do better? What content is most highly valued?”
Another editor noted the pandemic made her think more intentionally about the needs of her staff. This included being deliberate about checking in to see how everyone was doing.
Her magazine also instituted “no meetings Fridays,” so people could get a break from Zoom.
Another organization mandated that nobody needed to reply to e-mails on Friday afternoons if they didn’t want to; at the same organization staff were encouraged to build in periods of “unavailable time.”
One editor said a positive of the pandemic was she was getting more thank-you notes from readers.
Near the end of the watercooler, someone wondered if everyone’s job descriptions will be changed post-COVID—so much has changed.
So there you have it—a few
thoughts from communicators after a year of lockdown. What was your experience?
Maybe
you’ve seen this poem by Donna Ashworth, which has gone viral during the
pandemic:
You’re not
imagining it, nobody seems to want to talk right now.
Messages are brief
and replies late.
Talk of catch ups
on zoom are perpetually put on hold.
Group chats are no
longer pinging all night long.
It’s not you.
It’s everyone.
We are spent.
We have nothing
left to say.
We are tired of
saying ‘I miss you’ and ‘I cant wait for this to end’.
So we mostly say
nothing, put our heads down and get through each day.
You’re not
imagining it.
This is a state of
being like no other we have ever known because we are all going through it
together but so very far apart.
Hang in there my
friend.
When the mood
strikes, send out all those messages and don’t feel you have to apologise for
being quiet.
This is hard.
No one is judging.
*
* *
I don’t know about
you, but that poem rings true for me.
The pandemic drones
drearily on, day after day, week after week, month after month. Some days it’s
hard to get up the motivation to do much of anything at all.
All too true, you
say. But what does that mean for communicators, and especially for those
involved in communicating about hard issues like international relief and
development or justice issues?
At a time when
everyone is stressed, the people you are trying to reach aren’t terribly
interested in having you add to their problems. They have enough problems of
their own, already.
That truth was
brought home to me recently in an interview with communications researcher and
campaign adviser Anat Shenker-Osorio in Slate magazine.
In the article,
titled The Theory That Explains How Senate Republicans Justify
Acquitting Trump, Shenker-Osorio was asked what advice
he would give progressives who are having such a hard time trying to get
Americans to pay attention to the importance of the impeachment decision.
Or, as the
interviewer Dahlia Lithwick put it, why are progressives “generally suck-ish”
at things like this?
“If
you look at progressive messaging, one hallmark of it across issues is that we
like to begin with some permutation of, ‘Boy, have I got a problem for you,’”
said Shenker-Osorio.
Shockingly,
he said, people already have “99 problems and they don’t want ours. They’re
generally not shopping for new things to worry about. They have plenty on their
plates, especially right now.”
That idea stopped
me in my tracks.
Intuitively, I know
it to be true. Especially now, during the pandemic, when many are just barely
getting by. I know I don’t need more problems, more bad news, more information
about things going wrong.
So why would I
think the people I am trying to communicate with need more problems, too?
What I want are solutions.
I want some good news. Tell me something that’s going right for a change.
Something that makes me feel a bit better about this sorry old world.
Don’t add to my
list of problems, in other words. I've got enough already, thank-you very much.
For
communicators—especially those involved in hard issues international relief and
development or justice, climate change, natural disasters and the environment—this
is a challenge.
We know only too
well about all the things going wrong in the world. How can we communicate
about those things without making people turn the page or leave the page?
People are looking
for hope. For themselves and for others. Fortunately, we are also in the hope
business, not just the problem business.
Maybe now is the
time to focus on hope, even just little bits of it. Especially now when, as the
poem says, we all are spent, just putting our heads down to get through each
day.
Donna Ashworth’s poem, Ladies, Pass It On, is from her book To The Women: Words To Live By. Photo by Getty Images via the BBC.
