It's not all bad news!

If there's one common pet peeve that most people seem to have about the "media," it's that there are never any positive stories.

When I speak to civic clubs or other groups about the newspaper business, the question usually comes up: "Why do you print so much negative news? I never see anything positive in the paper."

Before I go to these speaking engagements, I always look at the last week's paper to make note of some "positive" stories that we have published. When I start listing these, people usually say: "Oh yeah, I remember that story."

The truth is, we do publish a lot of positive news. In fact, I would say most stories in the paper are either postive or nuetral.

Today's front page story about Ryan Yett, a Randall High School band member who is receiving a national honor, points this out.

It's a very positive story about an outstanding achievement. A great local story about an outstanding student. I think the Amarillo Globe-News does a better than average job of covering the achievements in the community by all types of individuals.

We have a weekly section called Our Town that is dedicated to nothing but postive news.

So why do people have the impression that the media is so negative. I have two theories:

1. Negative news is what we remember. It's what stays with us. When we have a traumatic event in our life, we often remember that far longer than a positive event. When I was a copy editor, I certainly remember more of the mistakes I made in writing headlines than those award-winning headlines (if there were any).

2. Readers actually want negative news in the paper and read it, but don't admit it. If you look at the top 5 stories each day on our web site, you'll see that many are "negative."

This came home to me even more when Dawn Dressler, executive editor of the Amarillo Globe-News, sent me the top 10 stories of the year on our web site:

Top news stories for the Year
1. Natural gas explosion rocks Bushland 11/05/09
2. English visitor shot and killed in Amarillo 11/06/09
3. Swingers' party protested 01/01/09
4. Wiccan to sit out two Christmas songs 12/12/09
5. Judge rules electric rate can increase 02/02/09
6. Mother of two knew abuse 04/21/09
7. State: Sterquell death a suicide 05/19/09
8. Trinity pastor resigns 08/07/09
9. Tourist killed at bar 11/07/09
10. Column - Norma White: You want change? Try these ideas 10/21/08

Guess what? I wouldn't say there is a positive one in the bunch.