People often ask me if I find myself completely desensitized from the bad news that always seems to heavily outweigh the good in our newscasts each day. From the murders and the sexual assaults and the kidnappings and the abuse stories to the fall of the economy and the rise of unemployment and the foreclosures and the Ponzi schemes.
And the answer is yes, to an extent, it’s just work to us. I would venture to say most of us in the news business look at bad news as, well, just that. News and business. It’s our day. It’s our 9 to 5.
We worry more about what we’ll present and how we’ll present it to you than what the story means to us, if anything at all anymore. Because for us, we’re not a part of the news. The news happens to other people. We’re just the messengers.
In recent months, I’ve found myself feeling a bit differently. Credit Chesley Sullenberger for rescuing more than just the 155 people aboard the US Airways plane he landed in the Hudson River in January. In a way, he saved the media for a while. He hoisted us from the funk of awfulness that tainted our holiday season and kept us hesitant about raising our champagne glasses to toast the birth of 2009.
For me, that bit of good news was a breath of fresh air. It re-sensitized me.
It shined a light on the importance of good news.
Of great news.
Don’t you hate when someone says to you, “I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want first?” It’s such a pain in the tuch. Don’t you always assume the news in that situation, no matter which you take first, will likely stink? That the good news is just the bright side of the bad?
But we do that because we need good news. Because bad news touches our emotions. It eats at us. It crawls under our skin. It festers inside us. And it picks away at our nerves until it’s finally washed away by what else – good news.
All that being said, I don’t really have any kind of concrete anecdote here for you. I can’t tell you to go out and make some good news happen. I’d like for you to. That would be nice of you.
Oh, by the way – I do have some good news...and I have some bad news. Let's do the bad first.
The bad news is today’s news will continue to be the news that you and I know so well. We’ll talk about the swine flu and the Craigslist killer and the Doomsday budget and the miserable economy. And for me it will be work, for you it will be news. Or dreck.
The good news?
Summer is around the corner. It’s the slowest time of the year for us. It’s the time of no news. And as they say, no news is good news. Let’s hope.
