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

View more presentations from Demos Helsinki.

Pursuit of Happiness

Richard Layard
Originally uploaded by Andy Miah

This blog has been rather quiet - or to be more honest - dead for some time now. My apologies for that. One of my New Year´s resolutions is the following: one post and one post only per week.

The new focus: things making us happier. That takes me back to the name of this blog. My favourite word in the Dutch language, kiplekker, basically means chicken licking good.

I finally made my way through economist Richard Layard´s (pic) classic Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (2005). Layard´s basic argument is that the obstacles we once had for using people´s feelings as a measure of societal success are more or less removed. Brain research today gives us enough evidence to measure happiness and well being. This provides us with an opportunity to move further from economic growth and behaviorism that have driven politics for ages now.

Layard stresses one of the things that we work with a lot at Demos Helsinki: that even if all the material things are well, we are more affluent than we have ever been, that does not result to happiness. In a way we as societies are failing the ultimate test: are we building societies where people do well? Every day greater numbers of people feel like they lack a sense of self, skills to deal with their feelings and a sense of relevance in relation to others. Layard puts special emphasis on issues such as helping the poor of the world, reducing unemployment, treating mental illnesses, finding new measuring criteria next to economic growth and supporting family life as ways to happier societies.

So the blog goal is now set for 2010: once a week a post over a phenomenon, project, advertisement, person, website, sports club that is enough reason to get excited about. There´s one more criteria.

The things covered need to answer YES to the following:
Does it create happiness?
and NO to the following:
Does it harm others?
And finally YES to the following (question taken from Charlie from Make Nubs):
Is it fresh?

More to follow.