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July 29, 2005
New B.C. service
Multiculturalism info offered through e-mail.
BAILA LAZARUS
A new service being offered to British Columbians promises to put
subscribers deeper in touch with the province's multicultural community.
The service, MVOX Multicultural Media Digest, was founded by former
Jewish Western Bulletin owner Pat Johnson and Israeli marketing
guru Steven RodRozen.
MVOX is an e-newsletter that will start circulating Aug. 1, providing
content summaries of the province's multicultural print media, as
well as special reports. The newsletter will arrive in subscribers'
mailboxes every Monday, keeping them abreast of news, activities,
events and opinions from roughly 30 media outlets ranging from the
Chinese dailies and Indo-Canadian weeklies to publications serving
the Vietnamese, Korean, Philippine, Dutch and Italian communities,
among others. In addition to the ethnic press, MVOX will include
material from faith communities, disability groups and the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender
(GLBT) communities.
"Each week, we will provide a broad snapshot of what multicultural
B.C. is talking about," said Johnson, a Vancouver freelance
writer. "We think anybody who wants to understand what's going
on in British Columbia right now has to understand what's going
on in British Columbia's multicultural communities."
A recent sample issue of MVOX had stories on the anniversary of
the Air India explosion, a report on Inuit husky killings from the
First Nations Drum, the Indo-Canadian response to the parliamentary
activities of Newton-North Delta MP Gurmant Grewal and the relationship
between Jews and Jedi knights.
Johnson said he first considered the need for such a service as
far back as seven or eight years ago, while working at the Bulletin.
"Working in a multicultural medium, you can feel quite isolated,"
he said. He thought there should be a means to distribute knowledge
about these different communities to each other, as well as to the
general public. "I was always interested in multicultural media
from a personal and professional standpoint," said Johnson.
"It always seems to me that this is a service that should have
been offered years ago. It seems pretty fundamental that you should
try and understand the community in which you live."
Rattan Mall, editor of the Indo-Canadian Voice, concurred. "Right
now, most communities are acting in isolation," he said. "It's
time they realized kids are going to the same schools, eating the
same foods, having the same ambitions, the same viewpoints. It's
not different communities, it's actually one community." He
added that many ethnic groups don't trust the news that's coming
from the mainstream press because they don't seem to understand
what's going on in many of the smaller communities. Mall, who worked
at the Vancouver Sun and the Province, said he didn't
see many ethnic minorities represented on staff at either paper.
"They're not racist, for sure," he said, "but they
do not grasp multiculturalism, really. Because multiculturalism
is not an intellectual exercise; it has to come from the heart.
It's an emotional thing. And if you haven't been part of a community,
you really cannot understand it from the emotional point of view.
So the way [the Sun and Province] present stories,
other communities often think they are talking down to them. I found
that problem when I was working in both papers."
Interest for the MVOX service has been quick in coming from government
agencies, the medical profession and nongovernmental organizations
like immigrant service providers. The marketing aspect of the project
was directed by
RodRozen, who grew up in Israel and has a background in marketing
and promotions in the Israeli music industry and as a special event
producer and promoter. He immigrated to Vancouver in 2000 and became
the part owner and publisher of Outlooks Vancouver, a monthly
magazine serving the GLBT community.
"All of the responses regarding this venture were filled with
excitement," said RodRozen. "All sectors found this concept
to be a valuable tool and, truly, were surprised it didn't already
exist."
Besides having information from English language papers, MVOX has
asked editors from non-English publications to provide summaries
of stories that give a unique perspective from what you would see
in the mainstream media.
"We're also looking for things that might surprise or interest
English-language readers that they might not be aware of in other
cultures," Johnson said. In addition to the media summaries,
Johnson promised original content such as special reports on court
decisions that might affect the multicultural community, elections
and budget speeches. MVOX will also provide a weekly calendar that
will indicate upcoming events, holidays and celebrations so subscribers
can be more sensitive to what might be going on other communities.
This would assist sales or marketing people to be more sensitive
to customers' needs, Johnson said.
Johnson calls this type of service "value-added" journalism,
both summarizing and analyzing the content, as well as providing
the back stories for content with which subscribers might be unfamiliar.
Aside from offering interesting content, Mall hopes that MVOX will
help people better understand what multiculturalism is all about.
"The tendency now is to have your own culture but, at the same
time, be part of the mainstream community, which a lot of white
Canadians find difficult to understand, even now – that you
can be multicultural, as well as fully Canadian," said Mall.
"I think [MVOX] will play a very important part in that integration."
The current subscription price for MVOX is $120+GST for a year.
Visit www.mvox.ca
or e-mail [email protected] to subscribe
or for more information.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, photographer and
illustrator living in Vancouver.
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