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.

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.

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.

What Makes a Story Go Viral?

Why do some things posted on social media go viral? What do they have in common?

That was the question raised by Maria Konnikova in the Jan. 21 issue of the New Yorker. 

In the article Konnikova references research by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, who analyzed about 7,000 articles that had appeared in the New York Times in 2008 to see what distinguished items that made the most-e- mailed list.

Through their research, they found that two features predictably determined an article’s success: how positive its message was and how much emotion it provoked.

Just how arousing each emotion was also made a difference. Stories that might make readers angry or anxious—about a political scandal or a risk for cancer—were as likely to be shared as one about cute pandas.

Berger and Milkman went on to test their findings in a more controlled setting. They presented students with content and observed their propensity to pass it along.

Again, they found the same patterns. Amusing and positive stories were shared more frequently than less amusing ones, and stories that elicited anger were shared more than moderate ones.

How a story is framed also affected its virality.

A story about someone who was injured that focused on the preventable cause of the injury was shared less frequently than one that emphasized how the injured person was overcoming that injury—even though it was the same story.

The findings have been replicated by other studies that found that videos that make people angry or inspire them are more likely to be shared. 

Berger has captured his findings in his new book Since his initial foray into the nature of sharing, Berger has gone on to research and test a variety of viral-promoting factors, which he details in his new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

According to Berger, while emotion and arousal still top the list, there are other factors.

One is what he calls social currency—something that makes people feel that they’re not only smart, but in the know. 

I would call it the mirroring effect; people are interested in knowing what others will think of them if they share something.

Before they share something, they may wonder: “How will this make me look if I share it? Will I look smart? That I care?”

The presence of a memory-inducing trigger is also important, Berger says; we share what we know or are thinking about. 

In media relations, this is known simply as currency—something that others are already talking about is more likely to be shared because people know about it. 

Finally, the quality of the story itself is a predictor of going viral, he says.

“People love stories. The more you see your story as part of a broader narrative, the better,” Berger says. 

In other words, a compelling, well-written story will be seen as worth sharing.

Well-written stories that are positive and arouse emotions—those are the ones that go viral, according to the researchers. 

The challenge for non-profits is that, somewhere along the way, many came to believe that stories needed to be drained of emotion and personality.

Somehow we came to believe that if we simply presented the facts of the case or detailed the scope of the injustice, people would respond. 

Unfortunately, lists of numbers of people who are hungry or in need rarely move us, or make us share that information.

For that, we need our hearts to be touched.

For more on this topic, check my post Why Your Brain Wants to Help One Person, But not Millions.   

Also see Boiling Over to Get Media Coverage for a local example of how one group managed to get media attention by hooking their cause to a story in the news.

Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, the PMO and the First and Second Rules of Media Relations

The troubles besetting the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Prime Minister himself, over the Mike Duffy affair bring to mind a column by Don Martin of the National Post.

Written back in 2008, when the PMO was engaged in another communications disaster, Martin provided two simple rules for good media relations and communications.

First, tell the truth

Second, never lie.

It’s also good advice for avoiding trouble with the law, not to mention getting re-elected.

Lying to the media is probably the worst sin a media relations professional can commit. (Exaggerated claims is a close second.) 

By not telling the truth, communicators risk poisoning their relations with reporters. And once trust is lost with the media, it’s hard to get back.

Plus, it never works, as the courtroom drama in Ottawa these days is showing—someone will always spill the beans.

And if that doesn't happen, reporters are enterprising people. Their job requires them to probe, research, ask questions and investigate—and be naturally suspicious.

If the truth is out there, they will find it. 

When they find it, and if you have been lying, it will not be a good experience for you or the organization you represent.

Not only will it cast a pall over your relations with reporters, it will jeopardize the reputation of your organization and cast the net of suspicion even wider to current and potential donors.

And any goodwill you have created over years of diligent and careful media relations will be lost—maybe never to return.

As Martin put it: “One lie and a flack is a liar forever. And that's the truth.”

For more on this topic, read "The First Rule of Crisis Management: Don't. Lie." by Scott Reid, a political analyst with CTV and formerly part of the PMO under Paul Martin, in the Ottawa Citizen.

Politics, Communications and Digital-Only Voters

As a communicator today, I know that the world is going digital.

Long gone are the days when large groups of people of all ages read a newspaper, listened to the radio or watched TV news.

The result? More time and energy devoted to social media.

(A sign of the changing times is that more non-profits today are hiring social media specialists—a job description that hardly existed even five years ago.)

Now politicians are adapting to this new reality.

An new study by Abacus Data for Google Canada found that 30 percent of all eligible voters in the 2015 election will get their information about politics only online.

As reported by the Globe and Mail, these “digital-only” voters—people who don’t watch TV news, listen to radio or read a newspaper—are typically young. But a fifth of eligible voters 50 years or older also say they are digital-only, too.

“Traditional broadcast communications are just not going to reach them,” says Abacus CEO David Coletto.

Overall, TV is still the main source of information about politics for most Canadians, with 33 per cent of respondents identified television as their primary information source. 

The Internet is close behind, with 30 percent, while for 19 percent its newspapers, 13 percent said radio and 4 percent identified word of mouth.

Respondents were also asked about what kind of information they search online. Seventy per cent said they either frequently, fairly often or occasionally looked for political news stories online, while 63 per cent said they searched for information about politicians and 60 per cent said they turned to the Internet to find out what parties stand for.

Despite the digital shift in recent years, Canada’s political parties still spend most of their advertising budgets on broadcast, probably because more older people mostly watch TV, and this is the demographic that is (currently) most likely to vote.

There’s more bang for the buck, in other words.

Of course, that's not the whole story; ads or stories on TV or a newspaper often end up online, anyway. So it's not like there's no digital reach. It just isn't the first way that political parties reach out to voters.

This is not unlike most non-profits, and for similar reasons. Going viral on Facebook is great, but it doesn’t bring in much money compared to a print appeal.

But the world is changing, and political parties and non-profits need to change with it. Who will be brave enough to go first and go all-digital?  

More Lessons from the World of Sports, or "News-Like News"

Earlier, I wrote about what non-profit communicators could learn from the world of professional wrestling. Here’s another lesson from the world of sports (if that’s what wrestling could be called), this time from ESPN.

In an article in by Derek Thompson in Atlantic, he notes that ESPN has built its brand on sports news. But on social media, straight sports news isn’t a hot or appealing commodity.

"What is least shareable is the final score, or how many points each team has,” says Nate Ravitz of ESPN.

What people want to read and share, he says, are the stories that make athletes relatable or exceptional.

"It’s stuff that is outside of the day-to-day construct of sports,” he says “It’s Rob Gronkowski’s cat. It’s a coach dancing in the locker room. It’s the moments we have conversations about, and we want to tell it the way you would tell your friend at the bar."

What does this mean for non-profit communicators? While it is tempting to share the “score”—how many people are made hungry in a drought, the size of the hurricane, or the number of people who will be afflicted by a disease—that’s not what garners attention on social media.

What people want to hear, and what they will share, are the stories of people who are hungry, who lost their homes, or who are dealing with the disease.

Thompson also goes on in the articles to note that ESPN is also seeing mobile as its future.

Although sports on the big screen is a staple of networks like ESPN, most people are not near a TV when a sports story breaks. They do have their phones with them, though.

But even there they are trying to avoid just giving the score.

Things that grab people’s attention on social media are what Thompson calls “news-like” news. Again, this would be the stories behind the news, stories about the athletes in the news.

Read the article in Atlantic here.