5 ms·

The first thing I notice browsing the homepage is that these "not depressing news" are often feel-good stories that can be uplifting but also aren't very intell

by simias 8y ago

The first thing I notice browsing the homepage is that these "not depressing news" are often feel-good stories that can be uplifting but also aren't very intellectually stimulating, e.g.: >Thanks to ‘Super Mom’ Saving Her Husband’s Life, He Opens His Eyes in Time to See His Son’s Birth That's super nice to hear but it barely qualifies as "news" as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile those that seem more interesting are not that uplifting to me, for instance: >Donations Pour Into Northwest Iowa Library After Man Burns LGBTQ Books So that means that somebody burned LGBTQ books in the first place? That's pretty messed up. >A Christian woman who was sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy has won her appeal and been acquitted in a landmark ruling. Somebody was sentenced to death for blasphemy at some point in this day and age? That's not uplifting at all. I guess I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. I do sympathize with the intent here, it's true that actual news can be very depressing. My personal "not depressing news" involves reading about sciences, in particular astronomy. Questioning the way our world functions, contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me.

all2 8y ago
> contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me. I contemplate those things and regularly verge on existential crisis. From a news curation perspective, I typically follow a couple of simple rules: timeliness, importance, and proximity. For a site focused on 'good' and 'uplifting' I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). Perhaps OP could shift focus, or add a section that have posts related to STEM subjects.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  > I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). This very quickly devolves into pop-sci clickbait. Cancer gets solved roughly 3 times a week, along with Alzheimer's and every other scary sounding disease. And our battery capacity somehow goes up by an order of magnitude a few times a month. And so on. Journalism is just broken in the internet age. Clickbait is more profitable than reality. Anger inducing clickbait is the most profitable of all.
  - all2 8y ago
    I rather like EEVBlog's criticism of tech journalism. It seems 'journalists' are actually just curators, looking for content that generates clicks. We're trying to feed the ad machine to make a little revenue. What would a successful model look like? There are a few revenue models that are at least interesting: Hackaday was purchased by SupplyFrame, doesn't run ads, has an internal store, and has decent articles (with sometimes rage-inducing flaws). The bias is obvious, they are owned by a parent company that now uses the platform to advertise on. The Guardian is shifting towards an ad-less, pay what you want revenue model. Patreon isn't really a model that an organization can use... Or can it? All major players in the social media and news market tend to lean on ad-centered models. Do examples of successful social/media companies exist that don't depend on ad revenue?
laretluval 8y ago
Many of the “positive news” sites out there also have this property, that the good news is often about horrible situations and ends up being still pretty depressing. Similarly if you go deep into cute animals websites, you’ll start getting more and more content about disfigured or abandoned animals. I think people—and maybe especially depressed people who seek out this kind of content—are really more deeply interested in dark stuff than truly uplifting stuff.
travisjungroth 8y ago
Reddit's /r/upliftingnews suffers from the same problem. "Woman held captive in basement entire life visits Yosemite." I don't feel uplifted, and that's not news.
- eecks 8y ago
  The real story is that the woman was held captive for her entire life - which is bad news!
sdenton4 8y ago
I think a big part of the problem is an asymmetry of how good things and bad things tend to happen. A terrorist attack might take place in minutes; building a strong community takes years of small efforts, no one of which might be 'newsworthy.' As a result, I find obituaries to be a great source of 'good news,' rounding up awesome work by an individual that perhaps played out over decades. It would be interesting to see some 'living obituaries' to capture some of this awesome work in a way which lets the perpetrators enjoy it a bit. (I guess major awards do this; but would be cool to see it on a weekly publication scale.)
- simias 8y ago
  It's true and I think an other problem is that "uplifting news" generically is kind of a lower common denominator: it's easy to come up with an actual newsworthy information that would be almost universally considered terrible but harder to find something that everybody will find uplifting. Country X allows abortion? That's going to make people angry. Forbids abortion? Now the rest are angry. A new law that makes polluting more expensive? Surely that's uplifting... unless you have to drive your car for work and you end up losing money because of it. It rains a lot? That sucks. It doesn't rain enough? Now farmers are complaining about the crops. Completely untainted positive news are hard to come by.

by simias 8y ago

all2 8y ago

> contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me. I contemplate those things and regularly verge on existential crisis. From a news curation perspective, I typically follow a couple of simple rules: timeliness, importance, and proximity. For a site focused on 'good' and 'uplifting' I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). Perhaps OP could shift focus, or add a section that have posts related to STEM subjects.

jniedrauer 8y ago
> I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). This very quickly devolves into pop-sci clickbait. Cancer gets solved roughly 3 times a week, along with Alzheimer's and every other scary sounding disease. And our battery capacity somehow goes up by an order of magnitude a few times a month. And so on. Journalism is just broken in the internet age. Clickbait is more profitable than reality. Anger inducing clickbait is the most profitable of all.
- all2 8y ago
  I rather like EEVBlog's criticism of tech journalism. It seems 'journalists' are actually just curators, looking for content that generates clicks. We're trying to feed the ad machine to make a little revenue. What would a successful model look like? There are a few revenue models that are at least interesting: Hackaday was purchased by SupplyFrame, doesn't run ads, has an internal store, and has decent articles (with sometimes rage-inducing flaws). The bias is obvious, they are owned by a parent company that now uses the platform to advertise on. The Guardian is shifting towards an ad-less, pay what you want revenue model. Patreon isn't really a model that an organization can use... Or can it? All major players in the social media and news market tend to lean on ad-centered models. Do examples of successful social/media companies exist that don't depend on ad revenue?

laretluval 8y ago

Many of the “positive news” sites out there also have this property, that the good news is often about horrible situations and ends up being still pretty depressing. Similarly if you go deep into cute animals websites, you’ll start getting more and more content about disfigured or abandoned animals. I think people—and maybe especially depressed people who seek out this kind of content—are really more deeply interested in dark stuff than truly uplifting stuff.

travisjungroth 8y ago

Reddit's /r/upliftingnews suffers from the same problem. "Woman held captive in basement entire life visits Yosemite." I don't feel uplifted, and that's not news.

eecks 8y ago
The real story is that the woman was held captive for her entire life - which is bad news!

sdenton4 8y ago

I think a big part of the problem is an asymmetry of how good things and bad things tend to happen. A terrorist attack might take place in minutes; building a strong community takes years of small efforts, no one of which might be 'newsworthy.' As a result, I find obituaries to be a great source of 'good news,' rounding up awesome work by an individual that perhaps played out over decades. It would be interesting to see some 'living obituaries' to capture some of this awesome work in a way which lets the perpetrators enjoy it a bit. (I guess major awards do this; but would be cool to see it on a weekly publication scale.)

simias 8y ago
It's true and I think an other problem is that "uplifting news" generically is kind of a lower common denominator: it's easy to come up with an actual newsworthy information that would be almost universally considered terrible but harder to find something that everybody will find uplifting. Country X allows abortion? That's going to make people angry. Forbids abortion? Now the rest are angry. A new law that makes polluting more expensive? Surely that's uplifting... unless you have to drive your car for work and you end up losing money because of it. It rains a lot? That sucks. It doesn't rain enough? Now farmers are complaining about the crops. Completely untainted positive news are hard to come by.