Bad news helps puts things in perspective

By DIANA DOLECKI

The Commercial Review

"There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band

One more sad story's one more than I can stand ..."

A recent letter to the editor brought to mind these lines by Anne Murray in her song, "A Little Good News."

The letter writer was bemoaning all the bad news that the media features on a daily basis.

I was reminded of the way one of my journalism professors defined news. He said something to the effect that news is what you tell your spouse at the end of the day.

Most of us don't go home and relate that the shrubs in front of the neighbor's house look exactly the same as they did yesterday or that the bank teller smiled at us when we cashed our paycheck.

Instead we ask if they heard about the suspicious house fire on the other end of town. We say that someone we ran into told us that a major company was planning to build a confined feeding operation across the road from where we grew up.

We open our bank statements and wonder aloud if the president can turn the economy around or if we will have to work until we die. We read the newspaper and note the injustices around the world and are thankful that we live where we do.

Newspapers and the stories they choose to feature do more than give us something to talk about over the water cooler. They help define social boundaries by showing us what is and is not acceptable behavior. They alert us to hidden dangers such as that the nice guy down the street may not be so nice after all.

Newspapers make us appreciate the blessings in our lives when we realize that our names aren't on the obituary page today. We read stories of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and think, "There but for the grace of God ..."

Media let us know that we are not alone when we experience sticker shock at the grocery store or panic when we realize that we have become one of those people who must choose between medication and other expenses.

The media helps us to understand our place in the world. We are all interconnected and how we live our lives makes a difference to the planet as a whole. The media gives context to events locally and around the world.

For something to be deemed newsworthy it should first be new; as in current. If I find dinosaur bones in my garden tonight, that would be news. If I found them several years ago then - who cares?

The more people affected, the more newsworthy the event. If there is a tsunami somewhere it is more newsworthy than if my washer overflows and floods the kitchen.

A local event that affects most of the area garners more attention than something that happened far away. If there is a parade scheduled for Saturday that will disrupt traffic in our town it is more important to our readers than if it happens in some other town.

You want good news? Read the sports page, read the family page, read the entire newspaper; not just front page. Our newspaper does an excellent job of "feel good" human-interest stories as in the story we ran on the front page on April 1, 2009 about the assistance dog.

There was also good news in the letters to the editor column on the same day the complaint letter occurred.

My point is that the media does seem to overplay bad news but that is a big part of their jobs. If we seek good news it is there. All we have to do is look for it.

I will end this column with some good news of my own although I don't deem it very newsworthy. My family is all relatively healthy and happy. The new grandbaby is gaining weight and we expect him to outweigh his big sister by at least his second birthday, if not his first.

Tomorrow we will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. My husband and I have spent more than half our lives together. He is more than a retired chemist and current paper carrier. I am more than just me. We are two halves of a whole. We complete each other. If that's not good news then I don't know what is.

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