Newspapers: First major international environmentalist group (one million members or more) to...
...publicly oppose the making, distributing, selling, and subscribing to newspapers and giving its membership three months to stop subscribing to, distributing, selling, giving away, or working for newspapers, after which those members who still are doing one or more of these things will be removed from the organization’s membership. Cancelling one’s paper subscription but subscribing to the newspaper’s online version is fine, allowed, and encouraged. [One of the most environmental wasteful things on Earth is newspapers. Entire forests are chopped down everyday so people can read these rags for a few minutes and then toss them away. Newspapers have no shelf life. With the next day, yesterday’s newspaper become worthless and only good for landfills. Why newspapers have not received the wrath of environmental groups is a mystery. This challenge works to correct that.]
Future Challenges: First major international environmentalist group (one million members or more) to make it a policy to:
1) Not attend any environmental conference, convention, meeting, and other gatherings where environmentalist groups who do not do the above are invited.
2) Publicly denounce any celebrity or politician who calls her/himself an environmentalist who still subscribes to a newspaper and/or gives interviews to newspapers. An exception is made for celebrities and politicians who give interviews to newspapers whose interview only appears in the newspaper’s online version.
3) Publicly denounce any business that calls itself pro-environment which still advertises in newspapers, doesn’t have a corporate policy to prohibit its CEO from giving interviews to them, and/or sells them or gives away free newspapers. An exception is made for businesses that only advertise on the newspaper’s online version and for CEOs who give interviews to newspapers whose interview only appears in the newspaper’s online version.
4) Not endorse any US President that allows a single newspaper reporter to be part of the White House press pool. Exception made for reporters whose “newspapers” are only available online.
5) Boycott any advertiser that advertises in a newspaper (the paper version) and to picket the advertiser’s places of business until it stops.
6) Boycott and picket any business that sells and/or gives away free newspapers.
7) Boycott and picket any public library that offers newspapers to the public.
8) Refuse to condemn the burning down of newspaper dispensers as long as the dispenser is outdoors and there isn’t any explosion involved. The environmentalist group may not endorse this practice though.
Releasing it on YouTube and paying to air it on all of the US cable news networks, the first major international environmentalist group (one million members or more) to produce a TV commercial that:
9) Shames members of the public who still subscribe to or read newspapers for how those members destroy forests and fill landfills.
10) Makes having a newspaper mailbox a mark of a person who loves landfills. The tongue-in-cheek commercial shows a garbage truck driver seeing a house with a newspaper mailbox and dumping his load of garbage on the front lawn with the homeowners overjoyed that the truck driver is doing so. The ad encourages people to toss their own garbage on these front lawns as well since the occupants obviously love landfills and probably wish they had their own. It even encourages the viewers to do so at night to give the occupants a nice surprise in the morning that they will surely appreciate and cherish.
11) Makes selling or giving away newspapers a mark of a retail business that loves landfills. Uses a tongue-in-cheek commercial showing garbage trucks dumping their loads in the parking lots of these businesses and the business owners and employees overjoyed that they’re doing so. The ad encourages people to toss their own garbage on the parking lots of these businesses as well since they obviously love landfills and probably wish they had their own. It even encourages the viewers to do so at night to give the employees and owners of these businesses a nice surprise in the morning that they will surely appreciate and cherish.
12) Makes advertising in a newspaper a mark of a business that loves landfills. Uses a tongue-in-cheek commercial showing people working at a landfill reading a trashed newspaper and remarking how they have been so greedy to not share their bounty with that business. The landfill people then ship a box full of stinky, disgusting garbage to that business. One worker asks if he should include the landfill’s return address on the box and the other says that the recipient might then feel guilty to receive such a generous gift and return it. “Best they think it is a gift from an anonymous Santa Claus.” The end of the commercial encourages viewers to do likewise to any business that advertises in newspapers and not to include their return address.
First major London betting house to:
13) Place odds and accept bets on the individual shutting-down dates of the printing presses of the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, UK's Daily Mail, UK's The Sun, South Korea's The Chosun Ilbo, China's People's Daily, The Times of India, Germany's Bild, Turkey's Hurriyet, and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun. [For this future challenge and the following ones, it is only about the permanent stopping of their printing presses and not their online editions. A good blog that tracks these kinds of developments is the Newspaper Death Watch.]
14) Place odds and accept bets on when the last printing press of the last of the newspapers listed in Future Challenge #13 to permanently shut down their printing presses.
Discussion:If you would like to discuss this challenge with others, click here to go to this challenge's discussion forum.