Sunday, September 20, 2015

La Presse Tablet, The Star's Touch and the Newspaper Extinction Timeline



Earlier this month, Montreal's La Presse announced it will eliminate its weekday printed edition starting in January.

The decision puts us right on track for the prediction of the Newspaper Extinction Timeline, which predicts that “newspapers in their current [printed] form will become insignificant” in Canada by 2020.

(The Timeline was a sort of whimsical, sort of serious effort by futurist Ross Dawson to start a conversation about the future of news.)


Also this week, the Toronto Star unveiled their new tablet version, based on the success of La Presse in Montreal. The Star plans to continue the print version.


(Also this month, ChristianWeek,  Canada's only national Christian news publication, announced that it is ending its printed version of the magazine. It will be web-only.)

Anyway, all of these changes makes me look ahead to the future, when those of us who grew up reading newspapers will have to explain them to our grandchildren, as in the Bloom Country comic below.




Sunday, September 13, 2015

Got Milk? What Non-Profits Can Learn from the Decline in the Dairy Industry













Canada's dairy industry has a problem: People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to.

According to data released by Statistics Canada, per capita consumption of milk in Canada has fallen by 18 percent since 1995.

Why is this happening? 

One reason is demographics: Canada is getting older. This means fewer children drinking less milk.

Another is ethnicity. Canada welcomes many immigrants from parts of the world where milk is not perceived as a food staple, as it is here. 

When immigrants come to Canada, they bring along culinary traditions that often don’t include milk.

Another phenomenon hitting the dairy sector particularly hard is animal rights. A recent survey found that a significant portion of the drop in milk consumption is due to the belief that industrial farming practices are unethical.

As well, the healthy foods sector is promoting other ways to get protein, calcium and other nutrients, such as almond, soy and rice milk.

Then there are those who say that milk is actually bad for us. A Google search turns up web pages titled "Eight reasons to stop drinking milk now" and "Study suggests milk is bad for bones, heart."

Finally, there is all the competition: Juice, tea, coffee, pop, sports drinks, and more.

In the face of this, the dairy industry needs to do more than buy ads that say "Got milk?" They need to take the issues head-on and take them seriously--not rest on their laurels as a healthy drink.

What does this mean for non-profits?

First off, if a downturn can happen to something as traditional and wholesome as milk, it can happen to anyone.

Second, like with the dairy industry, our main source of "customers" (our donors) is shrinking. The older demographic is literally dying off, and we haven't figured out a way to get younger people to "drink" more of our products.

Third, ethnicity is a challenge. It's not that people from other cultures aren't charitable; they are. But their charity may be more limited due to income, or because they funnel all their giving into the own community and its many needs.

Plus, immigrants send a lot of extra money back home to help their families through remittances. They may not have disposable income for charitable causes.

Fourth, if they do want to give to a traditional charity, what do they know about us? And what do we know about them? One of the fastest-growing ethnic communities in Manitoba is the Filipino community. How many groups offer information in Tagalog?

Fifth, we have our critics, too. Why send money to Africa--why not keep it at home? What about waste and corruption? Why should we help those who won't find jobs?

And, like with non-dairy sources of nourishment, there are alternatives to traditional charities. Many people today wonder why they should give to big, faceless and "corporate" non-profits when they can start their own charities. 

Sixth, competition is a reality. There are over 80,000 non-profits in Canada. Why should people give to yours?

What's the solution?

People in the dairy industry are calling on it to become more innovative, do more research and know more about consumer demand. How is the landscape changing?

Non-profits can do the same things. We need to understand the challenges facing our groups today, learn more about the people we want to reach, target our messages better, and counter our critics.

Most of all, we need to build and present compelling cases for why people should give to us.

After all, ads and messages that say the equivalent of "Got milk?" ("Got need?") won't cut it any more.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Dead Child on the Beach, Dying Child in the Desert: The Power of Images to Move Us















If ever anyone wondered about the power of a single image, the tragic photo of the dead Syrian child on the beach provides a chilling and moving answer.

The photo has appeared in media and social media around the world. It has not only affected people emotionally, it has also changed the nature of the Canadian election.  
(The child, whose name is Aylan Kurdi, was 3. Also drowned was his mother, Reham, and brother, Gulip, 5.)

This isn’t the first image of the terrible refugee crisis in the region. Many photos of crowds of refugees walking to Europe or crowded into small boats have been published. They have had the power to overwhelm, but perhaps not move us the way this image has.

And why is that? The fact that the child is dead is one reason. How small he is is another. And the fact it is a child—an innocent.

















It’s unfortunate that it takes such a tragic incident to capture the world’s attention. But it’s perfectly understandable, as I wrote earlier about why our brains make us want to help one child, but not millions of people.

The photo reminds me of another seminal photo from 1993 by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kevin Carter (above).

Carter spent much of his career recording the horror of famine and war in Africa. In 1993 he took a photo in Sudan of a vulture stalking a dying child. 

Like the photo of Ayan dead on the beach, the photo of the vulture and child came to encapsulate the tragedy of war and hunger in Sudan and helped shape both the public discourse and the response. 

For the photo, Carter won a Pulitzer prize. A year later, at age 33, he killed himself. 

In his suicide note, he said, among other things, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain . . . of starving or wounded children.”

Taking photos like that affects the photographer and the viewer. It affects us all at a visceral level.

But will it move us to action? That is the big question. And what action should that be?

That’s also a good question. Making a donation to your favourite charity to help people affected by the crisis in Syria would be a good place to start.