How to engage people to care...

Nick Kristof takes on the age old question of how to keep people engaged about the world's humanitarian problems:

Anyone who writes about global poverty, genocide or disease wrestles with the question of how to connect better with readers. I’ve increasingly felt that we do a pretty wretched job at this, and I finally put all my thoughts down on paper in this Outside article. The bottom line is that we increasingly have evidence from research in social psychology about what makes readers care — and the answers have to do with story-telling and a sense of success. Guilt-tripping people doesn’t work, nor does jumping and down about millions of people dying. From those of you who work on these kinds of causes, I’d welcome your thoughts on the Outside article or on how we can do a better job connecting with readers on these issues.