Happy News Site Has Potential To Be Just Plain Sad
from the all-smiles dept
Collaborative "citizen reported" news sites are all the rage these days, so some bizarre take on the trend was surely inevitable. The development in question is the imminent launch of HappyNews.com, which will focus only on -- you guessed it -- happy news. As opposed to the various wiki-style sites that get ordinary people to voluntarily write stories, HappyNews will operate more like Ohmynews, which pays people for their efforts. The paid-submission approach sounds worthwhile and ripe for testing in the US, but that's where the logic ends. The focus on only good news -- which apparently has been tried before -- is just a problematic premise. We're all for reforming the media's tendency to harp on the worst news possible and we wish HappyNews luck in their goal of supplementing traditional news, but perhaps there's a reason there haven't been any successful "happy news" outlets: happy isn't news. If a story with a positive angle is at all newsworthy, it will mostly likely either be: 1) picked up by traditional media, 2) a feel-good ditty typically relegated the end of local newscasts along with the one about the waterskiing squirrel, or 3) all of the above.
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What is Positive?
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Re: What is Positive?
Beauty is in the eye of...
One man's meat is...
On the other hand, the major media know that fear sells.
They will play up the '...another man's poison.' aspect of any situation.
Fox may claim 'fair and balanced' but the objective viewer is hard put to find it.
Given the chance, most of us are intellectually lazy.
We bypass alternative explanations for less demanding narrow perspectives .
We avoid ambiguity, preferring the often erroneous certainty of simple answers.
As for the 'All good news, all the time' concept,
it's just a different, less stressful flavor of the same sound-bite garbage
we've been spoonfed for the past several decades.
Sadly, outlets with intelligent analysis and discourse are receding further into the background.
Which begs the question: "Whither TechDirt?"
We are better off here than watching some CelebrityDirt elsewhere!
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Re: What is Positive?
Even then it's touch-and-go, taken story-by-story At the same time, if something is truly controversial, we err on the side of truth. We put stories in our environment section on positive impacts on global climate change because while many would fume and consider good news in this regard bad news because they don't believe global warming is occuring, global warming simply IS occuring, and there is no serious scientific debate on that matter. Therefore, global warming treatment initiatives are considered "good news."
As for "automobile usage" we also have to look at the nature of the story. Most "bike instead of drive" initiatives are voluntary, and would not make life significantly more difficult for the elderly. A mandatory law might, and I don't know if we can consider that good news.
Within the mission of the site, I am fully aware that (contrary to normal journalistic ethics) the more controversial it is, the less likely it will get coverage on our site. Again, some comfort comes from the idea that our site does not exist in a vacuum.
I am VERY open to ideas as to how to solve this problem and how to best serve our readers.
-- Brian Boyko
Disclaimer: Brian Boyko is an editor and consultant for Happynews.com
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Rigas and Kozlowski getting hauled off to the 'pen
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OK, I'll bite. Happy *IS* News
One person will be unhappy though.
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I don't nessessarily disagree
I also think that citizen-journalism might just be a powerful treatment of civic disengagement.
But I think some of those concerns will be alleviated by the citizen-journalism aspect of the news site. Happy News initiatives tended not to work because "happy isn't news" - but in the print media. We think this will work because we're not trying to compete with Time Magazine, we're not even, really, trying to compete. No media on the Internet exists in a vacuum, and we're encouraging people to treat Happynews as a suppliment. Indeed, though I'm loathe to say it - treat it, if you must, as an entertaining compliment to headier news sites.
Another reason this site should not be dismissed is that if we find the site isn't working because "happy isn't news," it is a simple matter to use the already existing technology and news structure in order to shift gears, adjust to the market, and provide broader coverage.
I don't think that we'll need to do that, though. After all, one of the biggest blogs on the Internet is Boing Boing, a "directory of wonderful things" and although they report depressing developments from time to time, it's readers often come for the cool tech stuff and general feel-good nature of seeing, say, a pac-man guitar, or barbie doll jewelery.
Happynews.com is very much an experiment in media and while you concerns are understandable, and indeed, well founded, I think you should keep an open mind about the possibilities of the site itself. If nothing else, we plan to grow, adapt, and change as time goes one. Or die.
-- Brian Boyko
Disclosure: Brian Boyko is an editor and consultant for Happynews.com.
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Re: I don't nessessarily disagree
I'd be interested to learn how this is ok.
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Cit-journalism and happynews.
-- Brian Boyko
Disclaimer: Brian Boyko is an -- do I really need to repeat this a third time? -- editor and consultant for Happynews.com
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Happy News
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