We would love to be the good news newspaper. We would love to be the good news newspaper all the time. Unfortunately, news doesn’t work like that.
A few years ago, back when he was still amusing, CBS news resident curmudgeon Andy Rooney did a piece on this exact topic. Everybody deplores the bad news, Rooney said, but unfortunately, that’s the only kind of news that people are interested in. Rooney’s piece involved nothing but good news to make his point.
On camera, standing outside the fence of one of New York City’s airports, Rooney intoned something like “this plane landed on time. Everybody got off and went where they needed to go. Nobody got hurt.”
More often than not, that’s the kind of news that happens all the time. Everyday, people get in their cars, drive safely to work, and drive safely home again, to homes that aren’t on fire, which they likely share with people who won’t kill them. They spend their evening in one legal activity or another and then go safely to bed.
That’s the everyday news. So every day that it doesn’t even qualify as news. It’s the unusual that stands out.
To figure out what news is standing out, the easiest rule of thumb to apply is this one: Go down to the local coffee shop, diner, (what have you) and sit for five minutes. Those conversations going on all around you – that’s the news.
People talk about the weather, taxes, work, lack of work, the fires, the arrests, or the neighborly disputes that may be boiling over into legal action. They rarely talk about the neighbor they get along with, but don’t know that well.
Beyond that, there is another layer of news: Basically all the issues that affect the public that aren’t as frequently discussed; comprehensive plans, or maintenance issues considered by the school board. Planning board meetings rarely make for thrilling stuff but they affect life in our towns and therefore, that is news.
What is hard to accept sometimes is that the news that gets people talking, the riveting stuff, the stuff that gets the blood pumping – the big structure fires, the splashy criminal trials – almost always involve a tragedy for someone else.
What is even harder to take is when the news involves a serious, life changing tragedy, one that twists your guts into a knot to even contemplate.
You know before you start that real people are in real agonizing pain and nothing you can do is going to make it better.
Unfortunately, that is news, too.
