Yes, Ren & Stimpy made me laugh...
The good news today is everyone is jumping on the Good News bandwagon!
Here's a list of sites that cover (or soon will be) the positive side of life:
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/i-have-good-news_b_1200481.html
Happy News
http://www.happynews.com/index.aspx
Good News Network
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
Amazing News
http://amazingnews.org/
Optimist World
http://optimistworld.com/
Great News
http://greatnewsnetwork.org/
Gimundo
http://gimundo.com/
My two cents on these good news sites:
I love the idea of spreading hope and positive news to the masses. I even have aspirations to have my own site dedicated to people helping others.
However, it's quite clear that these well-intentioned sites have not made an impact on the mainstream media. Yes, all the networks dedicate at least a couple of minutes each week to highlight the latest cause celebre and/or a sweet story about someone on Main Street USA helping someone down in the gutter. But why not more? Because being Good isn't Sexy! And sexy sells advertising, and keeps business afloat.
While working for a booking/story editor at a very famous television news magazine, I was continually told that if the story wasn't "sexy," it was not worth covering. So how do you make "good" sexy? One way is to have a gorgeous and/or famous person attached to the good deed. Another is to offer incentives like raffles and auctions that the media will want to cover. But there must be other ways to make good appealing. We need new ways to approach this old problem - how do you influence people to care about others and issues? Any thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment