I had a really tough time trying to find something of interest to blog about this week. As I scanned the Web, it just seems like there is so much negative news out there. There are some positive news stories too, but the negative ones seem to far outweigh the positive ones.
I went on the CNN.com home page on Monday, April 13th and on the lower left column they list the four regions with headline news stories. Today the list included the following headlines:
Northeast
*Huge water main break floods streets
*75 sick at Passover event
*40 homes burned, firefighter injured
*Cop shootings spur 911 questions
*Priest’s car hits group outside church
South
*Woman burned while getting nails done
*Teen suffers brain injury in batting cage
*Wind-blown tree falls on nursing home
*Church uses Twitter to spread word
*Children among 5 dead from crash
Midwest
*”Miracle” flight co-pilot back in air
*Woman hit by amusement park ride
*2 officers, 2 others injured in wreck
*Cop critical after gun battle
*Pit bull saves woman from attack
West
*Four rescued from sinking boat
*2 firefighters die in intense blaze
*Trimmer trapped in palm tree dies
*Mom, son reunited on MySpace
*Couple revives poodle with CPR
Now out of these twenty stories, there were no positive headlines in the Northeast, one in the South, two in the Midwest, and three in the West. The rest were all negative news. I wonder how many hits each of these articles gets and which ones receive more hits.
I would love to see more positive stories printed. Maybe like Anne Murray’s song “A Little Good News” would go a long ways in today’s world. I think the positive stories help to lift people’s spirits and in today’s world we need all the lifting we can get. Unfortunately, they tell me that the bad news is what sells.
It would be a great survey subject to see how people respond to a week of more positive headlines than negative ones. Maybe they could have a column of negative news and a column of positive news and keep a record of how many times each column gets read. I bet people’s outlooks and moods would be just a little bit brighter.
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Yeah - it does seem that the world is a whole lot of negative news. Its always good to hear people talk about positive things. And to hear positive news, thats good too - especially when you're region is involved. For example, Valley City with all of its problems in the last few months. It was good this past week to hear businesses could open because that meant things are slowly getting back to normal. But yes, there is way to much negativity in the world. If its not the economy its natural disasters. But a hit counter would be interesting to see, as to what people are more attracted to for news.
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