Donna Webeck

Freelance Writer ~ Copywriter

No news is good news?

By

Can someone please explain to me why seems that no news is good news nowadays?

Call me Shirley Temple and cue the rose coloured glasses comments, but I’m starting to want to live my life like an ostrich and bury my head in the sand far away from newspapers, computer screens and TV’s which seem to show more about what is bad and bleak in the world but not so much of the gracious and good. Is it that heartwarming news simply wont sell, and that it has to be anything but good if it is to be considered truly newsworthy at all?

My mother in law made a very salient point last week during ANZAC Day. On a day which we could have celebrated the brave and the bold men and their families for helping us have the liberties we enjoy today, the news was instead lead by the Matthew Newton saga. On Anzac Day?! Please…

Quite likely we can blame human nature to want to wallow in the misfortune of others or rubberneck at the awful events of the day. And of course I get that we need to live in a world that is informed, that if we weren’t kept well abreast of major events as they unfolded that there’d be hell to pay as well. But wouldn’t a bit more of all that is good and wonderful in this world just make us all feel a little better about the place in which we live? 

Instead those types of tales are reserved for that special spot, tacked at the end of a news bulletin, acting as the final “feelgood” story of the day. Which is lovely (and better than nothing), but after 29 minutes of disaster and despair (and sometimes that is just if you are a Parramatta footy fan watching the sport!) it’s hard to burst that bubble of bleak that is now hovering around you.

I know I am guilty of this as well; my whiney woe-is-me posts generally garner more hits than any prose peppered with positivism.


However during the week, I got the proof I needed to know that positive posts can make a difference. During a personal meeting I was having with Bank West, I was informed a blog I’d written last year called Chivalry in a Car Park – (which ended up going viral through the channels of Bank West) has inspired a special “customer care” or “umbrella” day once a month.

I like to think that is proof indeed that perhaps sometimes good news can carry some weight and help bring about happiness, however small. And hopefully more of the same will then stop me from having to live the life of an ostrich for years to come…
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Comments

  2. I do freelance writing for the Hawkesbury independent and my gorgeous publisher focuses on good news stories. It’s very refreshing!

  4. What you say is why I do not read some online news sites that focus on Mums. All they are trying to do is get the blood pumping and get page impressions. Not impressed.

  5. Nowadays headlines are never about something good – its always about deaths, robberies, accidents… So negative. We need stuff to cheer us up!