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A story about the publics desire for Good News

Good news? Now that's news

Adding to the daily drumbeat of dire pronouncements is almost too easy these days. The public yearns for stories that inspire, and they're out there if journalists want to look.

James Rainey

March 25, 2009

When Brian Williams asked at the end of the "NBC Nightly News" three weeks ago for viewers to send along good news, he couldn't have imagined the thousands of e-mails that would pour into the network overnight.

The resulting stories on "acts of kindness in this cruel economy" have made NBC the most visible of many media outlets pushing to give audiences some good news in the midst of bad times.

The trend-bucking features might have the public wondering: What took so long?

I'd say a bit of the traditional good news deficit comes from the misguided conviction among some news people that happy endings and serious journalism don't mix.

But I'd lay some of the blame with audiences too. There's more good news out there than some of you have recognized.

Let's start with one of the most basic tenets of journalism -- that "news" is what we don't expect. We pull out our notepads for the unexpected: Man bites dog. Plane cartwheels off runway. Jon Stewart goes Mike Wallace on interview subject.

To that old rule most big outlets apply a corollary: A complete paper or newscast must include a "mix," of breaking news and features, of photos and words, covering subjects both trifling and transcendent.

Most networks, cable outlets and big newspapers try to cover the entire spectrum, but their hearts really soar for the weighty, heavy stuff. That means lots of focus on dark stories, regardless of whether they hint at a resolution, or even much hope.

Prize-winning investigative reporter Frank Greve of McClatchy newspapers talked about the queasy reaction he got from some colleagues a couple years ago when he announced he would start a "good news" beat.

"Some of my old friends, when I told them what I was doing, reacted as if I'd told them I had cancer," Greve told the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for professional journalists. "Most, but not all" of those reporters encouraged Greve when they saw that he still reported and wrote with rigor.

Greve has noted how delayed licensing of drivers has driven down the teenage accident rate. He's written about how many old people remain sexually active. He's raised doubts about whether we should really need to worry about pharmaceutical contamination in drinking water.

That list of topics might seem like a hodgepodge, but there's a common theme. Bad news grows out of conflict or loss. Good news often means just following the conflict through to a resolution.

It might seem counterintuitive, but I'd argue one of the best "good news" stories in the L.A. Times in recent years was about a grizzly bear attack.

My colleague Tom Curwen painstakingly detailed how a father and daughter struggled to survive the 400 pounds of raw fury that bore down on them in Glacier National Park. His follow-up paid particular attention to how the daughter fought to regain her equilibrium. Without struggle and loss, we'd lose resilience and hope.

That's been the theme of "Making a Difference" that has concluded many "NBC Nightly News" shows this month. Williams told me it was his wife, Jane, who recommended a counterpoint to the drumbeat of bad news.

"We were having one of those kitchen-table discussions and she said the other part of this story is what everyone has taken on themselves, how they're doing more to help," Williams said.

The anchor/managing editor of the top-rated "Nightly News" called the response from viewers "incredible."

Among the panoply of do-gooders NBC has profiled: a small-town Alabama pharmacist who gave out $16,000 in $2 bills to his employees, requiring them to prime the local economy with the money; the Kansas trailer-hitch manufacturer who sent recession-idled employees out to fix ball fields, homes and churches; and the Denver restaurant that offered free or cut-rate meals to those who couldn't pay full price.

Even a hard-bitten newsman had to be moved by some of those tales and the thousands of dollars in donations and new volunteers they inspired.

I'd guess that most newsrooms in the country have talked about how to make the economic calamity real, but not overwhelming. Every reporter out there has heard from a friend or neighbor that they just can't take much more bad news.

At the Bakersfield Californian newspaper, Executive Editor Mike Jenner talked with business editors a couple of months ago about not recycling foreclosure and unemployment statistics. "It's going to be bad for a while and we don't need to repeat all these numbers breathlessly," Jenner said.

Jenner has also got "every reporter and editor in the room on the lookout for upbeat stories." Last weekend, the paper's local section featured a spread about workers who love their jobs.

In New England, the Cape Cod Times has taken to writing full stories on new businesses, rather than the briefs it once presented.

Editor Paul Pronovost won a small concession the other day: getting the paper to run a front-page photo of the first spring crocuses in bloom.

He had to fight off an argument from at least one other editor who preferred something from Iraq. Said Pronovost: "There is something to be said for offering a little bit of inspiration in dark times."

Many commentators are making a living now channeling people's fears and rage. That's nice for blowing off steam, but will it make anything better?

Not long ago, I got an e-mail from a guy who wondered if The Times would write about his parents on their 70th wedding anniversary. That once might have provoked a quick blowoff from me, Mr. Serious.

Now I'm thinking the story of a seven-decade marriage must include a few lessons about surviving hard times. I asked the proud son to send me more information.

james.rainey@latimes.com

Smiling: the science of feeling good about life

Life's a Beach! - Published Columns

Wednesday, 01 February 2006 00:00

Recent medical and psychological studies have shown that a smile is a whole lot more than just a “frown turned upside down.”

Did you know that high-tech medical imaging has shown that the sight of a smiling face makes the brain of an outgoing person “light up” more than that of a shy person?

Or, that powerful, self-confident people tend to smile only in situations where they are actually happy, while those who are less powerful or confident smile regardless of their emotional state?

Or, that laughter produces an adaptive response to stress by creating perspective and improving relationships?

These recent discoveries lend scientific credibility to what we have suspected all along: Smiling, when it’s genuine and not forced, serves as both a physical and emotional release of tension. When you smile, you not only make yourself happy, but you also improve the psychological atmosphere around your family and other relationships.

I realize that making yourself smile can’t, all by itself, generate happiness. There’s a cognitive (thinking) component as well. People handle this in different ways. Some sit down and think about how bad things could be, and how fortunate they are in relation to other people. A recent example of this was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So many of my clients commented, “I’m a little down right now about how my day is going, but think of how much worse it could be!”

I call this a “perspective building” exercise, and it’s fine, as far as it goes. But the absence of misery or tragedy does not, by itself, a happy life make. People can also find it helpful to consider what is going well in their own lives, and how they have the power to make it better. Research has shown that depression is a state of learned helplessness. In contrast, non-depressed people tend to focus on the variety of choices they have in their daily lives. It seems to make sense that people who feel more of a sense of control over their lives (empowered, self-confident) also smile more.

Psychologists and other mental health professionals are faced with the eternal chicken/egg question: Which comes first: smiling or mental health? Do mentally healthy people smile more because they’re happier to begin with, or does smiling actually lead to increased mental health? My experience has shown that it’s a combination of the two. The more you think about what you have to be happy about, the more you’ll smile. The more you smile, the more you’ll have good relationships with other people and, in the process, add to your own happiness.

Scientific investigation has uncovered some interesting cultural differences on the subject of smiling. According to one researcher, the French think that most Americans are dopey because they smile all the time. In France, smiling is generally not practiced among strangers, but is reserved for people with whom one has some relationship. I would add that these differences are not just cultural, but individual as well. The simple fact is that some people smile more than others.

Research also suggests that women smile more than men. A lot of psychologists suggest that women, more often than men, see themselves as responsible for nurturing the harmony and happiness in personal relationships. Interestingly, research also shows that when women enter traditionally male-dominated careers, the differences in smiling between men and women tend to disappear. Perhaps the particular situation has more to do with smiling than gender.

Sometimes people look at photographs of themselves—not formal portraits, but the kind taken spontaneously on holidays or at parties—and comment, “Look at how I’m frowning! Am I always like that?” This shows how hard it is to see yourself objectively with respect to behaviors like smiling. If your relationships are less than satisfying, or if your spouse, for example, seems chronically annoyed with you and you can’t understand why, then you might want to consider the role of smiling (or not smiling) in the situation.

Lack of smiling isn’t only a consequence of depression or sadness. It’s also a result of anxiety. When people are anxious, they tend to smile less. Have you ever flown on an airplane and examined the expression on most people’s faces, particularly before and after the flight? Some people have told me that when they force a smile under difficult circumstances, they actually start to feel better. Individuals who feel nervous about public speaking will smile in order to appear confident. The result is a more comfortable feeling as they make their presentations. People with phobias are sometimes helped by trying to smile and laugh during the feared situation. Smiling unleashes the power to “self-fulfill” a happy prophecy.

Everybody knows that smiling, like happiness and calmness, can’t be totally forced or faked. But maybe a little extra effort can perk up your emotional state, as well as improve the dynamics of your personal and business relationships. Give it a try! You can make a difference in the lives of everyone around you—one smile at a time.

Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist, counselor and author practicing in Ocean View. He can be reached at 302-539-5986, by email at DrHurd@DrHurd.com , or through his website at www.DrHurd.com.

A story I found today.....

Web sites find all the good news that's fit to post

By Dan Zak

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — As bad news hails from the heavens, as headlines thunder DEBT and RAGE and DISASTER, as television narrates the crumbling of society with stunning graphics and Wagnerian music, know this:

Good news has a safe house. It's a mile down an unpaved road, in a log cabin on a misty lake just south of Manassas, Va. Outside, the lake is glassy. The quiet is eerie. As if Wolf Blitzer is about to hack through the woods and incinerate the safe house with his bad-news bazooka ...

But inside, a woman trawls the Internet for good news. Geri Weis-Corbley, a mother of three teens, operates the Good News Network, a portal for the globe's uplifting headlines. Among this week's:

Optimism Boosts

Florida Housing Market

Good Samaritans

Lift Car From Pinned Puppy

Officer Buys Shoplifted Sandwiches for Homeless Man

In September, when the bank bailouts began, the Good News Network saw a 45 percent spike in traffic. About 200 people have subscribed to the site in 2009, boosting the number of paying customers past 1,000 since Weis-Corbley started $24 yearly subscriptions last May.

There are other Web sites that aggregate good news from around the world (Gimundo, Good News Daily, a flurry of religious sites), but few are as current, well-kept and newsy as hers. She's out to prove that good news sells and to broaden her mission into its own TV network.

"I want to give a second life to good-news stories," said Weis-Corbley, 49, who was a CNN camera operator and editor in the 1980s and believes in a balanced media diet. "Good news is evergreen. It never gets stale."

Some traditional media regularly feature good news — The Week magazine's "It Wasn't All Bad" briefs, CNN's "Heroes" feature, The Christian Science Monitor's "Making a Difference" section — but not until recently has good news become big news. The Los Angeles Times has a Twitter feed devoted to good news ("breaking positivity, by popular request" is its mantra).

Most notably, Brian Williams asked for good-news tips on the March 4 broadcast of "NBC Nightly News." Thousands of e-mails poured in within hours. Williams ended each show last week with a few minutes of positivity.

But the Good News Network has been up and running since 1997, before the war on terrorism and the collapsed economy, before Sept. 11 (the single greatest jump in traffic occurred on Sept. 12, 2001, as people desperately Googled "good news"), before the dot-com crash, before even the Internet boom.

It's a selective mind-set, said Weis-Corbley, who switches off the news when it reports something awful that she can't do anything about (for example: train wreck in India, shooting in California).

A relentless diet of unconditional bad news warps our perception of the world, said author and Harvard University lecturer Tal Ben-Shahar, an expert on positive psychology. The news magnifies only a bit of reality, such as the focus on Wall Street villainy.

"While the media focuses on a small number of frauds — which it should certainly report on — it entirely ignores the millions or billions of honest transactions that take place every day," Ben-Shahar writes in an e-mail from Tel Aviv, Israel. "Too many people, assisted by the media bias, extrapolate from a few cases of people hurting others that human nature is bad."

How to mediate the crush of bad news and stay informed? Weis-Corbley has a recipe.

"Don't watch any TV news. ... Listen to radio, which is easier to break away from than TV. ... Scan headlines. Only read stories that truly interest you, or stories that you need to know, such as a crime trend in your neighborhood. ... Avoid the stories that make you feel helpless or terrible."

Try it for a couple of days. It's hard at first. No buzzing through blogs on Google Reader. No checking Facebook, no watching Wolf Blitzer. It's a good cleanse, pretending the brain is secure in a safe house on a misty lake in Virginia.

But to understand the magnitude of badness you would miss, here's a peek back at the news of the week:

NOT SO FAST YOU GREEDY ... , screamed a New York Post front-page headline on American International Group's latest woes.

Austrian Incest Dad Convicted: Negligent Homicide, Enslavement, Rape ... rambled a soul-shriveling headline in the World section of the Huffington Post.

And from BBC News: Brain Decline Begins at Age 27.

Good thing we missed that one.

Useful news read on...

Good news, strange news - and a warning
(http://www.southtownstar.com/business/harmening/1487524,032209harmeningcol.article)

March 22, 2009

Jim Harmening

I received an e-mail from a reader this week telling me to check out www.darynkagan.com. It's a Web site dedicated to the all-too-often forgotten good in the world.

The site, operated by a former CNN anchorwoman, has stories, vignettes, video, links and more, all about people doing good in the world. I've always liked the more positive stories in the news business. Featuring people doing good deeds shouldn't be the exception, it should be the rule. There are tons of stories out there about volunteerism, Scouting, church trips to help the poor and more. For extraordinary stories, check out www.darynkagan.com.

I'm an equal opportunity columnist, so another type of story that catches my eye each year is that honored by the Darwin awards. The site www.darwinawards.com shows the other side of humanity. Well, OK, not the other side but an absurd side.

These are stories of how people are killed in bizarre ways that shouldn't happen. A man stealing a steel cable, only the cable is in an elevator shaft connected to the elevator above. Cut the cable and what goes up, must come down. This should go under the subhead of Newton's Law.

Switching back to the positive, if you know a teacher or are married to one, you surely know about www.goldenapple.org. These are wonderful stories of teachers giving their all each and every day for our children. Click on the Golden Apple achievers page and see how a teacher can make a difference in hundreds of students' lives during his or her career.

The Golden Apple organization presents to types of awards each year. The first is the Golden Apple award for teachers. The 2008 award winners have been chosen, and nominations for 2009 will open in September, so mark your calendars. Second, there's the Golden Apple scholars program that funds education for students planning to become teachers.

In last week's column, you learned from my mistakes. This week, you can learn from my near mistake. Recently, one of my clients' Web sites expired, as did the domain name because my client no longer wanted it.

But then came an e-mail appearing to be from something called Network Solutions. It said, "We recently notified you that the registration period for the following domain name registration had expired. As a benefit of having previously registered the domain name -- you are entitled to $272.52."

Wow, such an exact amount. My client was lucky. Free money! NOT!

It's a big scam! Don't click on the link, and don't give out your personal information. This is a phishing scam that asks for your bank account number so they can transfer money to you. The grammar was good, the logos looked authentic. I was convinced that it was legit, but I checked out Sophos, our anti-virus company, and soon found it was a scam.

Never give out personal financial information to anyone or any Web site that you don't know well!

Jim Harmening is president of Computer Bits Inc., an Orland Park computer services company. Send questions to jim@computer-bits.com. Personal responses are not always possible. Questions may be used in future columns.

A Good Idea.....

No "Doom & Gloom" Campaign Hits San Diego's North County

Posted: March 19, 2009 04:09 PM EDT

Updated: March 19, 2009 04:30 PM EDT

Every day News 8 tries to deliver the biggest stories affecting the world you live in. In the past few months, our top story has been the financial crisis gripping America, but some people in San Diego's North County feel bad news is bad for business.

After successfully selling stones for two decades, Dale Condy, owner of Gems of La Costa, decided to wage war with not just the recession, but the news media by launching a campaign called "No Doom & Gloom."

"I get that the media has to report the news, don't shoot the messenger, so to speak. You are not making it up, but I and many other people are convinced that you're not helping either," Condy said.

Condy says his stickers that include the message "No Hablo Recession" have struck a North County nerve. Tali Green, owner of Tali G's Fashion Boutique, says the media's coverage is killing consumer confidence.

"I think the media has talked about it way too much and it is causing people to stay away and close their pockets and wallets and they are therefore not spending in our local businesses," Tali said.

More than 500 stickers have been printed and passed out, with a new crop of bumper stickers on order. Chuck Kogge is a retired businessman who believes negativity breeds negativity, but he doesn't blame the media.

"I think the news portrays what is out there, and I think that's business," he said.

Although Dale Condy won't hang the country's financial failures on journalists, his recession rebuke is more than a jewelry store joke.

"I almost think that maybe the news has to be rated. Instead of PG is should be rated DG, with a warning that says this program contains doom and gloom, some content may be inappropriate for people with positive attitudes," Condy said.

Instead of ending this story talking about California's 10 percent unemployment rate, Dale would like to remind you that means 90 percent of the people in the state still have a job.

After he opened his business in 1989, he was hit hard by the recession in the early 90s. He says the popular mantra back then was "Survive until '95." Condy says they did survive, and we'll do it again.

Smile there are good stories out there here is one of them.....

...

Holy Cow, there is upbeat news out there

March 18, 2009

CARY, NC - A Cary marketing firm has started a blog to highlight positive events, particularly on the economic front.

Launched by Holy Cow Branding Inc., the blog, called "The Upbeat Sound," includes stories about businesses doing well, personal success stories, and other upbeat news.

"I had been frustrated with all of the negativity about the ‘tough time’ we are going through with our economy. I have tried to stay positive and was inspired to search for optimistic events, which is what compelled me to create The UpBeat Sound,” stated Kim Caroselli, account executive for Holy Cow Branding.

“The blog is a way to link people to all of the promising things that are happening across the country.

"You will find links to success stories, commentary of personal experiences, sound offs acknowledging local businesses that are thriving and other positive stories we come across. We want to take the focus off of the negativity and help everyone appreciate the good.”

The UpBeat Sound can be found at www.theupbeatsound.wordpress.com.

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New's that deserves a look.....

News Ticker

Ok a Make Me Smile Online recommendation! Just please come back

Knowledge of the Current Earth Eco System

A story about the publics desire for Good News

Smiling: the science of feeling good about life

A story I found today.....

Web sites find all the good news that's fit to post

Useful news read on...

A Good Idea.....

Smile there are good stories out there here is one of them.....

Welcome

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Make Me Smile Online Promote ~ Share ~ Develop ~ Entertain and Educate How the Power of the Smile can Change a Life One Smile at a Time

New's that deserves a look.....

News Ticker

Ok a Make Me Smile Online recommendation! Just please come back

Knowledge of the Current Earth Eco System

A story about the publics desire for Good News

Smiling: the science of feeling good about life

A story I found today.....

Web sites find all the good news that's fit to post

Useful news read on...

A Good Idea.....

Smile there are good stories out there here is one of them.....

Welcome

Site Clock

Smile Counter

Quote of the Day

Make Me Smile Online
Promote ~ Share ~ Develop ~ Entertain and Educate
How the Power of the Smile can Change a Life One Smile at a Time