Progress and women´s magazines

I gave a talk today at the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences to an auditorium filled with media students. The subject of the entire day was the responsibility of lifestyle media for what they present.

My talk (unfortunately in Finnish) is below. I focused on how a progressive lifestyle journalist should position himself or herself. I claim, that it is very easy to get stuck to the old rant on how journalists should be independent and not promote any specific idea. I claimed that the justification for being progressive for instance on sustainability can be found from the Ethical Code of Conduct for Journalists where it states that journalists have a responsibility to tell people what is happening in the world. And as climate change is the big issue of our time, you do your job poorly if you don´t build ethical and environmental norms into your work. Already journalists have made a commitment for human rights, this is the other big ethical test.

In the presentation I suggested that when dealing with sustainability, lifestyle media should build on what they do best: enthusiasm and encouragement for action. They should promote excellent and ethical choices with the same enthusiasm they promote a new eyeliner. Making things appealing works far better than the message about giving something up.

The third main point I raised was on how change in lifestyles happens. This I would claim is the ultimate test for women´s magazines. Most lifestyle media still deals with change by showing one person one morning transforming their life completely. This is understandable cos it´s easy to build a story around it. But if you actually look into research on how change happens, people who do big transformations always relate to other people. By showing this link and giving the readers tips on how to win support and get people along, lifestyle media could be one of the most powerful instigators of action for the better.

Edistyksellisyys ja naistenlehdet

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Food Politics

I just got a delayed Christmas present in the form of books. I have been fascinated by the politicization of food for some time now and therefore this present really hit the ball straight out of the park.

It´s clear that more and more people are starting to advocate for healthier and more sustainable ways of eating. Brilliant. What seems to work is what we do at Demos as well: giving people tools and tips how to act rather than beating them on the head with information and guilt.

I was actually quite surprised last week to see that TV host Ellen DeGeneres - a stay-at-home mom favourite - had author Jonathan Safran Foer in her show talking about his new book, Eating Animals. In his book Safran Foer explains his journey from a father of a new-born baby wanting to know what to feed his child to an advocate of a vegetarian diet.

If you have followed the debate - in the form of documentaries, celebrity chefs and books - there is nothing new in Safran Foer´s book. But what makes it briliant is that a celebrated bestseller novelist - you might even say a household name - decided to make a big move towards more conscious eating. In the TV interview Safran Foer was simultaneously funny, witty and still critical and factual. I think we get further with that strategy than with the Michael Moore approach.

The other book in the gift bag was journalist-writer Michael Pollan´s pamphlet-like publication Food Rules, An Eater´s Manual. It builds on his bestseller In Defense of Food but makes an excellent move toward simplifying his message. Pollan´s book is concise and something you could have in your bag when you head to do the groceries. The book has 64 tips. Here are some of my favourites:

Rule 3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
Rule 6: Avoid food products that contain more than 5 ingredients.
Rule 12: Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
Rule 21: It´s not food if it´s called by the same name in every language.
Rule 22: Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
Rule 47: Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Rule 59: Try not to eat alone.

I recommend you buy the book. It´s funny, useful and to the point. The most important contribution by Pollan to the public debate on food is: it´s not that complicated to eat healthy. Common sense gets you far.

One Less Device in the World

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Originally uploaded by amsterboy

I had a big interview to do today and was about to buy a new voice recorder. Kind of came to the conclusion that the old C-cassette machine was in need of pimping up. After seeing the prices of the Olympus machines, I decided to check whether Apple would have microphones to be used in iPhone or iPod. The nice guy in the store recommended that instead of buying a microphone and a recorder, I should just download the free iTalk software from App Store.

Tested it today and it works perfectly. Sound quality is good, it does not use a lot of battery and the files are easily transported to iTunes for further use. And what is most important, I did not need to buy more gadgets as Apple and its friends had solved the issue for me - free of charge.Thank you, Mr Jobs.

Once Were Consumers

olimme kuluttajia
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

The pamphlet Olimme kuluttajia (We Were Consumers, Tammi) published yesterday by Aleksi Neuvonen and Roope Mokka of Demos Helsinki lays out four scenarios for 2023. The book takes scarce resources and higher price of energy as matters of fact and looks at our future within this context. It quotes on one hand Hannah Arendt in advocating that true freedom is not the freedom to own but the freedom for meaningful and public action and on the other hand scientists that we have reached the climax in the amount of core resources. If we do not change our way of living, in 15 years the climate has warmed up to the extent that certain parts of China and the American East Coast are starting to be unbearable to live in. The book follows the line of thought in the public debate now that the recession could actually be an opportunity to reboot.

The theme spreading across the book is the way we tackle climate change. According to Neuvonen and Mokka, most of us wish that there will be a day when we will be told by The Leader what not to do and until then most of us continue flying and buying in the current accelerating speed - fully aware of its consequences. The reaction is the same as a child who covers his eyes and ears to avoid the bad news. According to the book we need to recognise our role in change for as long as we wait for our elected leaders to make that switch, we are somewhat doomed. Over the last few years politics has actually taken its lessons from consumerism - politics is more a service industry answering people´s wishes than about ethics, ambitions or doing the right and responsible thing. This is very clear in political rhetorics of today. Therefore that SUV will only be banned when the big middle class takes another turn in its consumption. The book is a rare but realistic call for individual responsibility together with others.

The scenarios see control rising as we fight for limited resources. Control is also one of the ways to make people change. Rather than listening to our neighbours through the wall, in 15 years we can follow the ecological footprint of our neighbours from a public record Wastebook. In a world of less, we will surely make sure that our neighbours will not be free riding the system. This has been happening already in some countries in smaller scale for instance by people reporting their neighbours to the authorities when they do not recycle their trash.

The book claims that have moved from Social Democratic I Need Politics to more Centre Liberal I Want Politics. We are seeing the emergence of I Can Politics but the true change happens when we make a shift to We Can. When the media, corporations and governments take a bigger role in showing us the interconnectedness, we move from rights and responsibilities to virtues and pursuing truer happiness through responsible action and more meaningful human relationships. It moves discussion from what I want to what we can do.

This liberation from consumerism and move towards citizenship is quite inspiring and Case Obama is a good example of how it functions as a rhetorical tool. But I end up thinking, after reading the book, what happens when the resources really start running out. What are the arguments for building trust? The book paints a relatively beautiful picture of collective action but I feel it slightly - maybe for the argument´s sake - downplays the conflict and difference of opinion on the tools to make the switch. Politics is about deciding on those alternatives. It is not a question of The Good vs. The Bad but different strategies maybe even towards a shared goal. Does the urgency make our political system more responsible or more vicious What kind of leaders to we get, wish and deserve?

Olimme kuluttajia makes a convincing case that we have no alternative but to change. But I recognise I am already somewhat in the inner circle of this stuff. Reading it makes me reorient my professional focus to enhancing those positive developments and using my writing skills to formulate those attractive arguments to convince ever bigger parts of the population. This requires reaching over the aisle and bringing the engineer, marketeer and politician to the same table to build that map of interconnectedness. And yes, this is terribly exciting.

Face The Music

Great ad by Demos Helsinki and advertising agency PHS as part of Ilmastotalkoot (Climate Action) on the impact of travelling. Apparently Finnish TV stations did not want to show the ad due to the risks it could cause for travel and airline ads. The advertisement won the Audience Prize in the Voitto competition for the Best Ad of the Year. (Source: Markkinointi ja Mainonta)

Good Old Centre

Originally uploaded by *Thinlina*

I sometimes wonder whether getting into politics in Finland would make sense. I find myself trying to articulate the reasons for this. Today I have a clear reason: the Centre Party.

Centre Party is the most difficult party to explain to a foreign audience. It builds on a legacy of an agrarian party, claims to be liberal but has some of Parliament's most conservative, xenophobic and homophobic MPs as its members. I wish to stress that the party also has phenomenally smart, liberal and open-minded people who have at times even made me wonder whether voting for them would make sense. They are also the party with the first female Prime Minister and the first Cabinet with a majority of women. So it's not all bad. But reading the Finnish news today reminds me again how much there is still to be done and makes me wonder what exactly is the glue keeping this party together.

Centre Party has tried consistently to claim that it is the true environmental Finnish party. Their actions show however a completely different line. Only today the Minister of Environment approved the enlargement of a hotel complex in a national park in Lapland, which according to many risks the nature of the environment. Yesterday the Prime Minister (pic) expressed his support for building Finland's biggest shopping mall outside the suburban area, which means that it can be only accessed by car. As the Minister for Housing (from his coalition partner Kokoomus) has clearly stated, this action would be a clear violation of the regional plan which states that big complexes such as these have to be linked to housing and other services. As the opposition reminded the Centre Party today, Vanhanen's support for the mall is in direct contradiction with climate change policies.

I wish the problems would end here. But the most severe critique from my end is on the concepts of morale and democracy this party expresses in its actions. The last government (also led by Vanhanen) had a cross-sectoral policy on active citizenship with the main result being more money to party-affiliated think tanks. Vanhanen has also expressed that he wishes that Ministers don't discuss issues publicly before the Cabinet has decided on them. And this week the leader of his Parliamentary Group Mr Timo Kalli refused to give out the name of his main campaign funder even if this is required by law. What was the answer of the leader of the biggest parliamentary group:"I am consciously breaking the law as there is no punishment."

Shocking beyond belief. Mr Kalli has now returned the money and made the name of the funder public after extreme negative publicity on the issue. The fantastic Minister of Justice Tuija Brax is speeding up the law reform due to the incident. And what does Prime Minister Vanhanen say? According to Helsingin Sanomat he has not discussed the issue with Kalli. I cannot help but drawing a comparison to his coalition partner Kokoomus which replaced the Foreign Minister due to the text message scandal. I wonder how one can continue as a group leader after publicly dismissing the basis of the work the Parliament is doing.

This kind of governance is bad for the environment, public morale, active citizenship and democracy. Government's role should be to foster debate, not to call for people to just shut up and let Ministers do their work. Governance is about democracy and leadership, not about administration. Vanhanen is the same who criticised the media for focusing too much on social inequality when according to him most Finns are doing well. And his party is the one that only speeded up social benefit reform when there was extremely bad international coverage. Way to go.

I am so angry I am about to burst.

Politics on the Plate

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Originally uploaded by momma a

Food matters. The rapid rise in the number of cooking programmes on television is quite amazing. Superstars like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart and Gordon Ramsay are turning into millionaires with programmes, cookbooks, endorsements of kitchenware and lecturing tours. With Oliver leading the way, the celebrity chefs are also raising awareness on free range chicken farming and the awful state of school lunches. Even in Finland the celebrity chef Jyrki Sukula left a while back the restaurant business to go and develop better fastfood. The latest issues of magazines like Good and Vanity Fair write huge articles on organic beef and on the dangers of genetically modified vegetables.

In the other end of the scale food is bringing another difficulty into the battle on climate change. Due to the rising price of rice, the World Food Programme has been calling governments for weeks to increase their funding in order to avoid millions of people starving to death. Even the British government - until now the Indiana Jones of climate change policy in the developed world - is thinking of scaling down its emission targets in order to stop the rise in food price for the world´s poorest. It does not take a Gandalf to figure out how this will play out - it is feminism and anti-immigration politicians or the world´s poorest and the big polluters.

Food divides us in a radical manner. In most countries healthy food is expensive or it would take hours to prepare for those who are already working the double shift. It´s the rucola-longing bobos against the ones not even having a cup of rice per day.

Article on diversity

Tiernapoikakilpailu 2
Originally uploaded by Ereine

The Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA (Elinkeinoelämän valtuuskunta) just published my column on diversity. In the article I basically state that diversity needs an economic justification in order for big things to start happening. A bit like what the Stern report did for the climate change debate. My articles headline is Jääkarhuista ja murjaaneista, which is a bit difficult to translate. Jääkarhu means polar bear and murjaani is the character in the Finnish Christmas play whose face is painted black with shoe polish (see pic).