And the Good News Is ...: How to Find Joy in Every Situation

Rational argument alone will not carry a message to the general public; it has to travel on the back of emotion. People will understand that medical or pharmacological advances offer a new treatment for a particular disease, but the information will be quickly forgotten unless the news has a visceral component that registers feelings such as fear for oneself or sympathy for others.

There can be various degrees of emotional involvement in a news item, ranging from the personal, through the societal to the global. A common ploy of the first type is to reveal a threat to a group we are bound to be sympathetic towards, such as babies, breast-feeding mothers or young children. Threats to pregnant women or to male fertility are likely to hook the young, while risks of heart disease and cancer hook those who are older. In the societal category the targets are broader and consist of threats to food, wealth and health, while for global hooks the emphasis is on deprived people in developing countries, or on wildlife, or on the planet as a whole.

And the good news is …

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All this may sound a bit contrived, and you may think that if people don't want to read about sound science, then it's their loss and that's the end of the matter. But the mainstream sciences will never regain the standing they once had if we continue to communicate badly. Nor is it a hopeless task. Even chemistry has had its news successes, the most notable being Viagra, which captured wide media attention in the late 1990s. There, of course, the hook was the most powerful of all: sex.

So what are the good hooks? The top three are sex, money and health. Link your story to one of those and you're away. The newspaper subeditors who devise headlines will have no difficulty in catching the reader's attention with SEX, CASH and CURE. Other hooks can be almost as effective. Have your research findings explained the unexplained? Or are they contrary to expectations? These make intriguing hooks with headline words such as CLUE and SHOCK. A local connection, a research first, possible job creation and even national pride are also useful areas to emphasize.

Research shows us that even in normal times, constant exposure to negative news can have a heavy impact on our mental health. In the midst of an unprecedented health and humanitarian crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, people are not only faced with new challenges in their work and personal lives but also subjected to a constant barrage of troubling headlines.

In a recent article, I discussed my work using behavioral insights to support decision-making for senior leaders and create effective communication plans for their employees. While the extent to which COVID-19 news consumption will affect our minds and bodies in the long term is still unknown, my research and my work as a consultant within organizations reveals there are still concrete actions that leaders can take to battle the effects of bad news and boost employee morale.

Afterward, I linked the results of both pulse surveys and the two pre-meeting questions we had asked respondents with the productivity analytics of the employees who were randomly assigned to the video-sharing meetings. The results showed that employees who had received good news were 18% more optimistic than the control group of employees who were not given the experimental nudge. Furthermore, the nudge group reported being 32.4% less anxious and 12.2% more likely to feel grateful for being healthy than the employees in the control group, who did not watch the good news videos or take part in the meetings.

No News is Good News Day is a splendid opportunity to catch up on one of those bestsellers you've bought but haven't had the time to touch. So dust it up, pick a spot and read something that isn't news.

We become increasingly disconnected from our physical surroundings as we continue to upgrade our devices daily. Unplugging can allow you to see things that are new to you because the news and the internet are no longer available to you.

If you turn on the news or scroll through it on your phone, you'll often be bombarded with fear-inducing or upsetting headlines. Mainstream news tends to focus on conflict, disaster, scandal, and politics, not happy news or subjects commonly thought to make us feel good.

It refers to this type of writing as constructive journalism, which doesn't focus on negative and conflict-ridden headlines, but instead on the happy news. Positive News is a quarterly magazine, as well as an online publication.

A common theme among positive news websites is their longevity, which in itself is good news. The Good News Network has been operational since 1997 and has amassed an archive of over 21,000 positive news stories.

The so-called Good News Guru, Geri Weis-Corbley, has been at the helm since founding the site. Like Positive News which primarily covers good news in the UK, Good News Network has its own regional slant, covering some of the best positive news in the USA.

If you want to stop doomscrolling, open the Good News Network app in place of your regular news provider or social network. If you really can't avoid social media, then try out these obscure social media apps for when you get bored as well.

For those who prefer their news in podcast form, it also produces the Good News Gurus Podcast. It acknowledges that good news doesn't end at the US border, so the site has an entire section dedicated to positive world news. There's even a Spanish language section of the site.

Unlike some positive news websites, Good News Network is not a non-profit organization. This is because it wants to show that it is possible to be profitable while still focusing on the positive things in life.

While other positive news websites tend to take a slower approach to journalism, The Optimist Daily is focused on the here and now. The site's aim is "to accelerate the shift in human consciousness by catalyzing 100 million people to start each day with a positive solutions mindset", of course by offering them positive news.

That doesn't mean you have to stop reading traditional news altogether, though. You can use the most trustworthy news websites to scratch that itch. The site is provided for free thanks to its subscribers, known as Emissaries.

Some phrases used to describe the site sound like they were taken from a new age self-help guide. But, beneath the flowery language, its mission is the same as other positive news websites; to spread good news today and minimize negativity.

Reddit isn't a website that people normally associate with good news or happy news. The site is more commonly linked with controversy for its more infamous Subreddits. However, Reddit can offer you good news for a change.

The Uplifting News Subreddit describes itself as "a place to read and share positive and uplifting feel-good news stories". The Subreddit first launched in 2012, and the community is now 18 million+ strong.

However, if you want to read only good news, you can opt to ignore the discussions and use the Subreddit to discover positive news stories instead. With such a diverse membership, the site is also a great resource for positive news around the world.

Although we've covered some of the best positive news websites, you may still be wondering if there are any good news newspapers out there. Fortunately, there are. The Happy News is a quarterly newspaper by British writer and illustrator Emily Coxhead.

The 32-page newspaper launched in 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The magazine is available on a subscription basis and provides an offline good news alternative for when you want to switch off from your screens.

News items are arranged chronologically by month, and each issue is centered around a specific happy news theme. There is even a section called Everyday Heroes, which looks at some of the most inspirational people and organizations, as nominated by The Happy News readers.

If traditional media is to be believed, then we definitely live in a frightening, scary, and dangerous world. It can be exhausting to turn on the news each day and be presented with some of the most upsetting and negative news stories.

It doesn't have to be this way, though. These positive news websites (and one good news newspaper) offer feel-good news. And these funny news websites add a dose of laughter too. Such news sources can help give you a happier outlook on the world.

We first published this list of good news sources a few years ago and thought that now would be a good time to refresh and update it. A few sources have dropped off the list and new sources have been added. We are very happy to report that many sources are still doing the same good work of lifting our spirits and highlighting what is good in the world.

In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819 (1995), we struck down a similar viewpoint restriction. There, a private student newspaper sought funding from a student-activity fund on the same basis as its secular counterparts. And though the paper printed such directly religious material as exhortations to belief, see id., at 826 (quoting the paper's self-described mission "'to encourage students to consider what a personal relationship with Jesus Christ means' "); id., at 865 (SOUTER, J., dissenting) (" 'The only way to salvation through Him is by confessing and repenting of sin. It is the Christian's duty to make sinners aware of their need for salvation'" (quoting the paper)); see also id., at 865-867 (quoting other examples), we held that refusing to provide the funds discriminated on the basis of viewpoint, because the religious speech had been used to "provid[e] ... a specific premise ... from which a variety of subjects may be discussed and considered," id., at 831 (opinion of the Court). The right to present a viewpoint based on a religion premise carried with it the right to defend the premise.

Every physician occasionally must deliver bad news to patients. But how best to do this? Jalid Sehouli, MD, director of the Clinic for Gynecology and the Center for Surgical Oncology in Berlin, Germany, has been dealing with this issue for over 20 years. He has written a book on the subject (Von der Kunst, schlechte Nachrichten zu überbringen) and recently conducted a large study ("How to Break Bad News") among physicians and medical students. 2ff7e9595c