Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Happy News: Film at 11

The journalistic phrase "if it bleeds it leads" has never been more accurate. The main stream media thrives on the morbid and the sensational regardless of its real news value. Bad news sells, it always has. I think everyone has uttered "why can't we just have one channel with nothing but good news for a change?" Well, apparently someone has decided to run with it.

Check out happynews.com and new website that plans to deliver the good news to your PC everyday. I have no idea if such a thing will survive, because face it, how interesting is "man does not bite dog"? I do, however, applaud them for giving it a go.

At first glance it seems to be well edited and professionally done. I also understand that they gladly take submissions from the general public. All submitted content will also be edited and fact checked before being posted - which strangely enough doesn't seem to happen too often at your more established news outlets (see: CBS News, NYT, LAT and WaPo).

In my heart I hope they succeed, I really do. We, as a society, need a respite from death, death, death, war, war, war, sex, sex, sex, scandal, scandal, scandal and John Stewart every once and a while. Let's hope HappyNews.com starts a journalistic revolution.


CW

1 comment:

Timothy Birdnow said...

It sounds like a refreshing alternative, but I don`t think I`d cash in the old 401K to invest in it just yet.

Most people just plain like to crepe-hang, and bad news is always more popular than good news.

I hope it does well, though. We need more upbeat and positive influences in our lives!