Israeli man-of-all-media Yair Lapid has an interesting lament in his latest column. Lapid, son of a recently deceased politician and journalist, and husband of a best-selling author, writes columns for Israel’s largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. He also hosts a popular TV news magazine, performs onstage with well-known Israeli singer Rami Kleinstein, and has written dramatic TV series. In today’s column, The News You Want, he tells the tale of the “good news” segment he insisted on putting in his new TV show.
“One of my first decisions was to add a two-minute feature at the end of the program, right before the weather forecast. We called it ‘One Good Person.’ The idea was simple. Every week we dedicated two minutes to one person who does something good for his or her community: A lady who opened a club for children at risk; a military officer who insisted on employing mentally disabled youngsters; the father of a missing soldier who visits wounded Israelis; a woman who established an organization that sends people to hug abandoned babies at hospitals so they know what love feels like, despite all.”
It was a nice idea — especially in Israel, where the country’s mainstream media tend toward the tabloid. Lapid points out he created the special items in exact response to people who complained to him that the media only report “bad” news. However, Lapid recently decided to kill his good news feature. Why?
“This feature was produced with much love and talent, and we invested plenty of money in it (in fact, based on a per-minute calculation, ‘One Good Person’ was the most expensive part of the program.) Yet the viewers left. Every week, when the feature came on, they switched to other channels and our rating dropped.”
This isn’t news, really. We all know that “bad” news sells, as it is inherently more dramatic and compelling. Good news may make us feel better about ourselves, but somehow it just doesn’t have that dramatic “oomph” that makes us stop and pay attention.
This hasn’t stopped some entrepreneurs and positive thinkers from trying to create media that focus on “good news.” A search of the words “good news” on Google produced these news sites: Good News Network, Good News Daily, The Good News (a Christian site), and The Happy Times. That’s just a sampling of what’s out there. But have you heard of any of them?
(Disclosure: I introduced Yair Lapid to the English-speaking media by posting translations of his Yedioth column on Ynetnews.com, which I developed in 2005.)
