Does the news really have to be so grim? Why the wall-to-wall bad news? These are the kind of questions the public have long asked of the media. And our media training armed us with the riposte: ‘people say they want good news, but when it comes to it, they buy and read bad news. So that’s what you do. Bad news is good for business’.
To underline this, we were told about the newspaper that launched to provide its readers with good news only. This seems to have been in New York, but some decades later, it’s hard to find much on it. Nevertheless, the story went that it didn’t last long and its last front page was about its own demise. So, said its critics, it stuck to its principle to the very end because its closure was actually good news.
You could tell our trainers quite enjoyed passing on this lesson in ‘good v bad’ news. Editors don’t really like to think that good news sells. What’s the point of all those incredible investigations if that’s not what people will buy. Investigative reporting sits well with the idea that bad news sells. Who undertakes a piece of investigative journalism to uncover some shockingly good news? So we all wanted to believe it too. It sits well in the culture of journalism, much to the annoyance of many PR executives.
There was a time and place for good news, but these tended to be looked down upon. Local news reports would have ‘And finally...’ slots. And newspapers had their ‘silly season’ in the summer months when news was scarcer and editors ran cheering, amusing, strange or just plain daft stories that would sometimes run for ages. Every summer, there’d be great whites sighted off Cornwall, squirrels doing anything from water-skiing to getting high on coke, and of course, the annual hunt for an escaped big cat supposedly on the loose in back gardens.
Or editors saw good news as the result of censorship — the stuff the powerful want published. Usually a bad thing, but justified in extreme circumstances like wartime. Then the news was censored not just to keep stuff secret that could be useful to an enemy, but also for public morale. Morale matters during wartime. Does it not matter during peacetime then? During the covid pandemic, we thought so. National broadcasters in particular felt a certain responsibility to not be too gloomy.
News avoidance on the rise
News providers are increasingly questioning not just the commercial, readership or ratings value of bad news, but also whether it’s actually damaging the health of their readers and the publications.
We’ve known for a long time that people have been moving away from traditional media to social media for their news. But now over a third, according to the Reuters Institute, are actively avoiding news altogether or at certain times. And that’s usually because they find it all too goddam depressing, so they want more positive news or stories about solutions, less on the big bad news stories of the day.
Searching the web for good news publications now reveals dozens of sites and even some print publications dedicated to positive news. You wouldn’t have seen this recruitment ad twenty years ago but it seems less surprising today: “Media brand producing journalism about what is going right seeks an editor.”
More significantly, established news outlets are deliberately seeking to cover more good news in order to woo back a public weary of a relentless diet of depressing news.
Publishers are making special ‘good news’ slots in their publications, broadcasters are adding in many more light-hearted or otherwise positive stories to make us feel better. They range from the light-hearted, like the boy winning the seagull screeching contest or the lost sausage dog rescued from the Australian wilderness, to the moving, like the Ukrainians helping victims of the Turkish earthquake or the Palestinian / Israeli swim club.
This shifting mix, from bad to better, from negative to positive, is deliberate. There’s every reason to think it could work. Although it’s not new to all media types.
Even newspapers haven’t always sold solely on the back of bad news. Jack the Ripper sure did sell newspapers, as the archetypal bad news murder story. But go back further, and newspapers filled their front pages with small ads. More positive and surprisingly enduring, not really news but reasonably positive opportunities, offers and so on.
For magazine publishers, it’s not so new. Many consumer magazine are full of positive stories. It makes commercial sense. We don’t diss readers’ heroes, we celebrate their passions. Many people buy magazines to feel good about themselves, their interests or their hobbies. Some of the best-selling magazines are far more positive than negative. They have heart-warming human stories, inspirational ideas and uplifting, against-the-odds success stories.
In the trade and professional magazine world too, we know the value of positivity. They know there’s a place for revealing investigations, exposing wrongs and generally getting under the skin of the powerful. But trade magazines don’t just report problems. They always cover the solutions too. That’s what their industry readerships do: they exist to find solutions to the problems they face. So you’d better cover them - critically and questioningly of course -- but without it, you’ve left out half the story. Including them adds some hope to a bad new story. So magazines of all kinds might be well placed to work this growing demand for more positive news.
I’ve always liked to support serious investigations and harder, revealing exclusives, but have a soft spot for the less serious stories too, the ones that make us smile. I even went on radio once to talk about musical condoms. A few more good news stories and a more positive news outlook won’t hurt anyone.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
