I delivered the speech to the entire group of participants as a conference formatted 10-10-10 presentation: 10 minutes of speech, 10 minutes of individual group discussion, and 10 minutes of feedback and large group discussion. My speech was accompanied by Keynote/PowerPoint slides (I have included a few), but even just the text below, I believe, makes the point well on its own.
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Have you ever been touched by something you read or saw on TV?
Have you ever been touched by something you read or saw and then wanted to do something about it?
I’d like to share with you about two people who were moved by something they saw, and what they did about it.
This is the Descendants.
They are an Adventist singing group in Mongolia. Adventist News Network did a feature story about them. Near the end of the story the writer happened to mention that their rented van broke down 10 times during a seven-hour drive to support an evangelism series.
A man in the United States was touched when he read this and he wanted to do something about it. He bought them a new van. Who knows how much longer they would be struggling without it.
This is Josant Barrientos.
He is an Adventist pastor in Washington D.C. Every Thursday morning he volunteers as a chaplain at the Washington Dulles International Airport. He is one of 18 chaplains. He’s the only Hispanic chaplain there, the only chaplain who speaks Spanish and can communicate with the large numbers of Hispanics who work at the airport.
Adventist News Network did a feature story on him. A reporter at the Washington Examiner newspaper saw this online. She was touched and she wanted to do something about it. So she wrote her own feature story about him.
That got the Adventist Church mentioned positively in front of 300,000 readers.
These examples are two stories. They both touched someone who then wanted to help. One person helped with money, another person helped with publicity.
We need to touch more people with the content we create. We have lots of effective delivery systems in our global church – web, TV and print – but we need to make sure our content is something that people want. We need to touch our members. We need to touch our community. We need to touch a chord in their minds and hearts so that they will want to do something about it.
We will be able to better accomplish this when we increase the quality of our content. We can do this by making sure we fill an existing positions at our conferences, unions and divisions with great story-tellers. They are called “journalists.”
Having a journalist on staff will enable us to tell more touching stories in our magazines, on our websites, and through our videos.
I’ll now share with you three influential people who would support this idea of hiring journalists and story-tellers and why they would support it.
1. Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Disney corporation.
2. Paul Kim, an icon in Adventist media production.
3. Ellen White, a servant of the Lord and a co-founder of our denomination.
Let’s go through these one by one and we’ll see if I can touch a chord in your mind or heart about how hiring journalists and other content creators will further the mission of the church…starting with:
Number one – Michael Eisner, former chief executive officer of Disney, a global media empire worth about 57 billion dollars. He now writes books and works for an investment firm.
In a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal Magazine, he had some very direct things to say to the media industry about what gets people’s attention:
“The creation of content has never been more important.”
I know this seems obvious, but it’s huge.
There is content and there are delivery systems. Content is the message that is sent through a delivery system. It can be through a website, printed in a magazine, or chiseled onto a clay tablet. This conference is mainly about the effective use of delivery systems, but both content creators and delivery system experts need to work together. Eisner also said:
“A lot of people can learn to write computer code and understand the inner workings of the technological revolution we’re going through, but if you’re going to be in content…
...and this is huge...
“I would rather you understand what makes a good narrative. To find people who can make you laugh or cry or smile or get upset or learn something about yourself. Those people are rare. They are rarer, frankly, than the others.”
In other words, if you can create good content, then there will be people in delivery systems who can support you. Technology, graphic design and delivery systems are important, but they need to have carefully crafted messages to deliver.
We need to be honest with ourselves. We need to know our limits. Do you really honestly have a good grasp of technology? Do you really understand how to communicate information clearly through good architecture? Can you really write engaging stories that touch people? We need to know our own limits.
I know myself. I’m not a graphic designer. I tried it for a week. A friend hooked me up with a designer at the Baltimore Sun newspaper. He showed me some tips, and what I realized after that experience is that it’s just better for me to hire a graphic designer to do that kind of work for me. I’m a writer and a photographer and that’s what I can offer. I need people like you, who can deliver effective technology and information architecture. But communication is the content, not necessarily just the delivery system. Again, there’s a big difference between content and delivery system. We need to work together. And what Michael Eisner is saying here is that the commitment to content and getting the right people on board should be key.
This is very similar to what Ruben Gelhorn once told me. Ruben Gelhorn is in the South American Division. He is director of public relations at River Platte University in Argentina. He said we need communication students to understand writing and theory. Technology and equipment is something that can be learned later. Production is only part of communication. A TV camera can be part of communication, but it’s only a tool. It's the message creator that's the most important.
Both Gelhorn and Eisner say that the person creating the content needs effective support and it’s important to get someone on a team who has training and experience of writing touching content. Someone who has proven they can write for the public in a big way. Speaking of big ideas, our second person,
2. Paul Kim, is a person who works with big ideas and important people for big audiences.
When former Adventist Church President Jan Paulsen wanted to create his official presidential video for the last General Conference Session, Paul Kim was selected to produce it. What an honor, and what a talent. He knows his stuff and he recognizes good content when he sees it. He wrote to me after Session and said, “Who is that reporter you had, Edwin Garcia? Every one of his stories on Adventist News Network was standout.”
I’m not surprised that Paul Kim would say that. You see, we brought on Edwin Garcia just for Session. And what Paul Kim didn’t know was that Edwin Garcia has worked for nearly two decades as a reporter for major market newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News, which is the newspaper in the technology capital of the world. He understands how to cover major events in interesting ways.
Paul Kim didn’t know Edwin Garcia’s background, but he did know that Edwin delivered an excellent product – great, interesting stories. And if an expert such as Paul Kim recognized good content, you bet the readers noticed, too.
We need journalists and content creators who can impress and touch the other journalists in our denomination.
You know, I could probably fool some people into thinking I’m a lawyer. I could hang out at courthouses and carry a briefcase...
...but very soon, I’m not going to fool other lawyers. They’re going to see that I’m not good at what I do. And you know what? Eventually, the public isn’t going to be fooled anymore either, because they’ll see that I lose my cases. So instead of hiring me and giving me on-the-job training, you're better off hiring a trained, experienced lawyer.
I could fool some people into thinking I’m a surgeon. I could hang out in an operating room and make incisions on bodies with a scalpel. But I’m not going to fool other surgeons. They’re going to see that I don’t know what I’m doing. And you know what? Eventually, the public isn’t going to be fooled anymore either, because they’ll see that, even though I’m sincere, my patents die. So instead of hiring me and giving me on-the-job training, you're better off hiring a trained, experienced surgeon.
I know journalism isn’t necessarily as prestigious as law and medicine, but it’s similar because it does take a long time to learn how to do well – to get at the quality level our denomination needs. I want the content creators in our world church to write stories that stand out to people like Paul Kim. When we get journalists on board who produce content that impresses other journalists, we’ll more effectively touch our members and the community.
But it’s not just me saying this, or people like Paul Kim, and many others here I’ve talked to here, our church co-founder 3. Ellen White had several words of counsel regarding this issue:
“Let the press be utilized, and let every advertising agency be employed that will call attention to the work. This should not be regarded as nonessential.” (Evangelism, pg. 103)
“The character and importance of our work are judged by the efforts made to bring it before the public,” White wrote. “When these efforts are so limited, the impression is given that the message we present is not worthy of notice” (Evangelism, pg. 128).
I think we have message worthy of notice. But sometimes it would be hard to prove based on the effort we put into public relations. We need our best people on board.
This year we’re celebrating 100 years of the Communication department in the denomination. We even had a ceremony at the General Conference. 100 years ago the General Conference realized they needed help to effectively deal with the media. Guess who they hired: Walter Burgan, a reporter. They hired a reporter because they needed someone who spoke the media’s language.
James White had even been lobbying church leaders about doing this 30 years earlier.
At the 100 years of Communication celebration, the General Conference Director of Archives, Statistics and Research, David Trim, said: “‘Today, we would do well to reflect on this decision, examine why [Burgan] was needed, why he in particular was hired, and how reviving this tradition at all levels of the denomination can strengthen our unity and mission.”
Trim went on to explain how early efforts in public relations were successful because of having trained and experienced staff on board. He went on to say:
“Similarly today, if you’re going to do outreach to a Hispanic community, you need to hire someone who speaks Spanish. And it’s the same with other types of outreach – if you’re going to do outreach to media, you need to hire someone who speaks that language and understands that culture,” he said.
Trim noted that even Ellen G. White urged early Adventists to capitalize on the press and advertising agencies to “call attention to the work.”
Guys, we’re playing a game of high stakes corporate communication. We’re in it to win it. Other organizations are in to win it, too. We need our best professionals on board.
These three people would support the idea – Michael Eisner, Paul Kim, and Ellen White.
If you’re a union president or division president, having an experienced journalist on staff, yet it’s going to raise your own profile as a leader, and that’s fine – you’re not being cocky or arrogant. We need to boost you as our leader to the community. But even more important, getting a journalist on staff is going to offer your members, pastors and institutions the recognition they deserve. They deserve that recognition both within the world church and out in the community.
We want to touch people with the stories we write. Not just to produce something just to say we produced it, but taking the time to make sure it’s something that’s going to touch people and move them to action. I hope you’ll commit to getting qualified, talented journalists and creatives on board in your division. It will make your division more prominent on the world stage, both within the global church, and even more importantly, in your community.
Let’s get qualified journalists as our Communication directors so they can identify news and report it. Let’s get some more vans bought, and our pastors featured in the media, not just in Washington, D.C., but in Seoul, and in Manila, and in every major city around the world.
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Before we get to the questions, since we met last year in Jamaica, I have written a book on journalism tips, especially for people new to reporting on religious journalism. It’s called Journalism Patterns. And it’s free for you to read. It’s in blog form. The website is journalismpatterns.blogspot.com. When you go there, I would suggest looking at the first entry … from August of last year and work your way back.
I will say this now. Write something. Put something on your website. Update your pictures in your Flickr account regularly. Even if it doesn’t move people like you would hope, it’s still something. Stale content on a website just bores people. Write a caption that answers the five Ws – Who, What, When, Where and Why.
Also instead of reporting the headline: “Men’s ministry hold meeting,” report what happened in the meeting, what was voted, what’s going to come out of it. Please don’t write, “we held constituency meeting.” That would be like writing a headline: Korea plays Brazil in soccer match. Instead, lead with who won the match – the results.
OK, Let’s get to the questions. I’m interested in learning your feedback.
Questions:
1. How can we increase the number of qualified and experienced journalists on staff at each conference and union?
2. How can we encourage more Adventist young people to enter the profession of story-telling through journalism?
3. How can we help administrators commit to content and program creation as much as delivery systems?
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