For the Media the Future is Digital, Internal Memos Show

Internal memos from two major North American media outlets have put a spotlight on how journalists are viewing the future.

The first, from the Boston Globe, shows how newspapers are trying to leave the world of print behind.

In the memo, editor Brian McGrory tells staff that it is time for the Globe to “once and for all break the stubborn rhythms of a print operation, allowing us to unabashedly pursue digital subscriptions.”

As reported by Joseph Lichterman for Nieman Lab, McGrory goes on to say that the Globe needs to publish stories earlier in the day, restructure beats, create new audience engagement no longer see print as the dominant driver of workflows.

“None of the changes detailed here will come as any surprise, though in total, they represent significant change,” McGrory wrote.

The Globe is not alone; over the past two years, newspapers such as The Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have all enacted similar initiatives.

The other major media outlet to share its vision of the future in a memo to staff was the CBC in Canada.

Although the CBC is not beholden to print timelines, it has been bound to the idea of supper hour and 10 p.m. newscasts in the past.

No more. In a memo to staff, General Manager and Editor in Chief Jennifer McGuire wrote that, in the future, the CBC will be driven by digital.

Digital news, she said, “needs to be a part of everything we do, not a stand-alone pillar of our news service.”

To make this possible, the CBC needs to make sure that all its journalists have more opportunities to be connected to its digital news operations.

The CBC also needs to “redirect resources to create more original and investigative journalism and to better serve audiences on emerging platforms” and The National, its flagship news program, needs to “inextricably linked to the reinvention of our news service. “

One of the key figures in the changes is Brodie Fenlon, senior director of digital at the CBC. I posted about his vision for the future earlier on my blog.

For both media outlets, the story is still the most important thing, regardless of what platform it is on. And they want to honour those who still value print and traditional TV viewing.

But increasingly, the most important platform is digital. 

At one time, the way we interacted with the media was through “appointment journalism.” That is, we got the news when the media was ready to deliver it.

Those days are gone. They have been completely disrupted and disintermediated by the Internet and the Smartphone.

The media has also been impacted by unbundling. For newspapers and magazines, the only economical way to share news in the past was to package it into daily, weekly or monthly issues.

But people don’t want to wait until the media have enough articles so it makes financial sense to release it; they want it now.

Or, as someone put it, don’t wait until tomorrow to tell me what happened yesterday.

Today we want the news when we want it; we won’t wait until the media says it is ready.

For the media, breaking away from these rhythms is hard. If you spent your career working towards deadlines like the afternoon paper or the supper hour news, these changes are tough.

But media consumers won’t have it any other way. For the media, it is adapt or die.

As McGory of the Globe put it, the goal is to be “more nimble, more innovative, and more inclined to take worthwhile risk” in order to be a leader in sharing news.

Or just to stay alive.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it.

Siloam Mission, a Winnipeg charity that serves homeless people, has come in for criticism recently by a Winnipeg Free Press columnist who says it is spending too much to raise funds. He followed with another column charging they send out too many appeal letters. Tired of seeing this important non-profit take it on the chin, I decided to respond with an op-ed in the Free Press about the realities facing charities today when it comes to fundraising.

Siloam Mission—and other charities—have come in for some criticism lately over fundraising practices.

In particular, questions have been raised about the number of direct mail letters being sent by various groups, and about the amount of money spent to raise funds.

While no organization wants to spend money it does not need to spend, what’s true for business is also true for charities—you have to spend money to make money.

That has been true for decades. What’s different today is that charities need to spend more than they used to in order to keep providing their services.

When I started in the non-profit sector in the 1980s, things were different, and simpler.

Back then, it was much easier to reach potential donors. If you could get news about your appeal into newspapers, radio and TV, you pretty much covered almost everyone you wanted to reach.

Things are very different today. Newspaper circulation is declining, as are the number of people tuning into radio or TV news.

Today, we live in a noisy and fractured world of communications. Not only are people bombarded with messages from many different sources, they also have many more options for getting information—primarily through social media.

Breaking through this clutter is difficult, and expensive. It requires focus and repetition. And even then you may only be reaching a fraction of the audience, compared to ten or 20 years ago.

Then there’s the matter of donor loyalty. In the not-to-distant past, charities could count on donors selecting a charity for life, then making regular donations.

Today, for many people donor loyalty is mostly a thing of the past—especially for younger people. Often, the only way to get a donation is to send one, two or more direct mail letters, in the hopes of getting a cheque in return.

Speaking of cheques, if you are under the age of 30, you probably don’t write many of those. Most transactions today are now by credit or debit cards, and much of that is online. 

One of the fastest-growing expenses for charities is the service charges from credit card companies and businesses that provide encryption services.

And what about all those direct mail letters? Studies show that direct mail continues to be one of the best ways to raise funds. It is certainly better than e-mail or social media, which has not yet shown itself to be a good way to appeal to donors.  

Finally, about those charity rankings; is that the best way to rate a charity? Many in the non-profit sector are uncomfortable with them. This includes people like Bruce MacDonald, President and CEO of Imagine Canada, an umbrella group for Canadian charities.

The rankings, he told me, measure the wrong thing. They are “skewed to having a heavy emphasis on the cost side of business,” he said, adding they “perpetuate the belief that ensuring adequate resources to deliver quality programs is a bad thing.”

What MacDonald objects to is how the highest rankings are given to groups that spend the least on things like staff salaries, administration, communications and fundraising. The ones that need to spend more to deliver their programs end up with lower scores.

What MacDonald would rather see measured is impact—what effect the charity has on the lives of people it is trying to help. If it costs more to help someone beat an addiction, escape homelessness or overcome poverty, that should be seen as money well spent.

“If you want real impact, you need to have real investment,” he stated.

This was a point forcefully made by Dan Pallotta in his much-viewed 2013 Ted Talk titled “The way we talk about charities is dead wrong.” In it, he called out “the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities.”

Too many nonprofits, he said, “are rewarded for how little they spend, not for what they get done.” Instead of equating frugality with morality, he suggests donors “start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments, even if that comes with big expenses.”

The non-profit sector today is experiencing dramatic challenges. Needs in Canada and around the world are rising.  At the same time, the pool of the most faithful and generous givers—older people—is literally dying. 

Coupled with a decline in attendance at worship services (religious people are another major source of funds for charities), non-profits are struggling to raise the funds they need for their important services.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it. And it’s getting tougher every day.

From the April 21, 2017 Winnipeg Free Press.

Manitoba Opera Uses Performance Featuring Suicide to Connect with Community

Arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way.” 

It used to be that if you were going to put on a show, you just put on a show.

No need to worry about community concerns, critiques or trigger warnings.

No more, as Manitoba Opera has discovered.

This spring, the Opera is performing Werther, an opera that romanticizes suicide.

In a province like Manitoba, where someone kills themselves every other day on average, and where some northern Indigneous communities have experienced suicide epidemics, putting on a show that inspired copycat suicides can be a real challenge.

So, what’s an opera company to do?

In the case of Manitoba Opera, you use it as an educational opportunity.

Werther, the opera they are performing, is the 18^th century story of a young poet who falls in love with a beautiful woman who is engaged to another man.

Unable to have a relationship with her, and to give her up, he finds peace by taking his own life.

The story, first published as a novel by Goethe in 1774, was turned into an opera by Jules Massenet in 1887. The publication of the story reportedly led to the so-called “Werther effect”—copy-cat suicides.

With this in mind, Manitoba Opera decided to team up with Mood Disorders of Manitoba to promote discussion about the issue of suicide at a panel discussion in April.

“We want to use opera as an art form to have a conversation about issues of concern in the community,” says director of marketing Darlene Ronald.

In addition to the panel discussion, students attending dress rehearsals will hear a presentation from Mood Disorders about healthy perspectives on love and relationships, and there will be two pages in program about suicide prepared by the organization.

For Ronald, providing educational events like the panel discussion is a way for Manitoba Opera to engage the community.

“We want to be part of the lives of people in the community, and find ways to connect more strongly with people,” she says.

Of course, she also hopes that some who attend the panel discussion—who may never been to the opera before—might also come to hear a performance.

But even if they don’t, “we hope they will still be touched by it, and what we are trying to do,” she says.

Offering events like this is also a recognition that arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way,” Ronald says.

“The arts are changing, and also how people view them,” she adds, noting that arts groups need to find new ways to connect with audiences.

This isn’t the first time Manitoba Opera has reached out in this way. Last year, for the production Of Mice and Men, which features an intellectually disabled character, the Opera teamed up with groups that work with people with intellectual disabilities.

In 2014, when the Opera performed Fidelio—the story of a woman seeking to free her husband, a political prisoner, from jail—they used the production to celebrate the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and also to highlight the plight of political prisoners around the world.

Refugees from other countries living in Manitoba were invited to be involved as extras in the performance.

The two productions were “a great experience for us, and for our patrons, a great way to talk about these issues and the things we have in common,” Ronald says.

Their efforts have been noticed by others, such as Opera America, the association for almost 150 opera companies in North America, and by OperaAnchorage, which used Manitoba Opera’s model to honour veterans.

“It was great to see something we did recognized in this way, and rippling through to others,” says Ronald.

While glad to offer these extras, she says that it isn’t easy—Manitoba Opera’s staff is small, and resources are tight.

“But it’s important to do,” she shares. “We hope we can add to the conversation in the community. That’s our aim.”

I think Manitoba Opera is on to something. At a time when money is tight, audience numbers are declining, and many are questioning the value of the arts, arts organizations need to find new ways to connect to their communities.

This includes linking what they do to the issues and concerns of the communities they live in—and that they ask for support, both in terms of attendance and taxpayer dollars.

Will it work? Will gestures like this turn around the fortunes of groups like opera companies? It’s hard to know.

One thing is for sure, though. At a time when it is hard to get any attention, putting on programs like Manitoba Opera did on suicide can generate additional publicity, including outside of the arts section (as happened for Manitoba Opera in the Winnipeg Free Press city section).

And if it makes someone feel more warmly towards Manitoba Opera—even if they never attend a performance—that’s not such a bad thing, either.

Getting Outside the Bubble: How the Vegan Movement Started Disrupting U.S. Culture

A big challenge for those committed to a cause is getting caught in a self-reinforcing bubble, or echo chamber.

Within that bubble, everything makes sense. And why not? Everyone you encounter believes in and accepts the basic suppositions: Foreign aid is important, peace is better than militarism, action needs to be taken on climate change, etc.

The main problem, of course, is that the arguments that everyone accepts inside the bubble often make no sense to those on the outside—the very people who need to be won over if the cause is to succeed.

That’s where the American vegan movement found itself in the early 2000s.

According to Chase Purdy in an article on Quartz, titled How the Vegan Movement Broke Out of Its Echo Chamber and Finally Started Disrupting Things, “the movement was always its worst enemy.”

Members of the movement “made their first impressions bellowing into bullhorns, desperate to make a difference by willing it with a loud enough voice,” he wrote.

But actual engagement with non-vegans “was a weakness as people tended to ignore the passionate subculture with a rigid gospel prohibiting use of any and all animal products.”

For the most part, he wrote. “the only marks left by their efforts throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were those scuffed into their shoes as police officers dragged them off the streets.”

And then, he says, something changed.

A small group of vegans decided to take a different, a controversial—within the movement—tack.

The 2001 schism splintered the vegan community into two camps: absolutists who tout veganism as an all-or-nothing moral imperative, and pragmatists who quietly advocate for incremental change.

Over the past 20 years the pragmatic side has won out, with the result, according to Purdy, that “the movement has morphed into one of the biggest disruptors of the American food system.”

The key message behind the effort was that getting people to eat less meat was easier than getting people to eat no meat—and that you might be able to spare more animals by doing that.

To propel this message forward, the small group decided on an inside strategy or trying to change farm animal welfare policy, pressuring companies to improve housing conditions for pigs and hens, and drafting legislation and ballot measures to get the issues in front of voters.

They also enlisted the support of groups like the Humane Society of the United States, which has enough money, smarts and political power to influence policy in that country, along with sympathetic CEOs of various companies.

Today the work of that small group of radical pragmatists has led to the creation of The Good Food Institute, a lobbying shop in Washington that represents the interests of meat-alternative food products.

According to Purdy, all of this has resulted in a force that is “a legitimate threat to meat industry practices.”

How did it do this? Instead of throwing red paint at places like McDonald’s, they picked on farm animal production techniques that appealed to consumer emotions, got issues on to ballots, and forced companies to “defend practices that can seem draconian. Should piglets have their tails cut off without anesthesia? Should egg-laying hens and farrowing sows be crammed into cages in which they can barely move?”

Despite the success, not everyone in the movement is happy or onside.

Says Purdy: “The 2001 split in the vegan movement was painful, leaving behind feelings of resentment that never healed. From the absolutist point-of-view, the pragmatists diminished the importance of fighting for animal lives by concentrating their energies on farm animal welfare.”

Those absolutist tactics might make true believers feel good, but they estrange the movement from the mainstream culture, and fails to change behavior, Purdy says.

Or, as he put it, quoting one of the pragmatists, “when you ask people for all or nothing, typically you get nothing.”

The story of the vegan movement in the U.S. has parallels to other many causes that people dearly believe in. As long as true believers stay in their bubbles, and demand all-or-nothing in terms of commitment, they will forever be sidelined and ineffective.

Playing the insider game has its dangers, of course, but not working with the culture and the political structure is also a dangerous proposition. And isn’t getting something better than getting nothing?

That’s the big question facing social change groups. What’s your answer?

For more on this topic, see my post What NGOs Can Learn from the Success of the Gay Marriage Movement.