- HappyNews.com
HappyNews.com is a news website that received a moderate amount of media attention when it was launched in the summer of
2005 . This was due to the stated editorialbias of the site to only report positive, upbeat (aka “happy”) news.=Controversy=Reaction to the site was divided. On the one hand were the people that said that the nature of news is that it is largely bad, that people needed that information to be informed citizens and to act responsbily. This was summed up by Pulitizer-Prize winner
Dan Neil in a piece about HappyNews for the LA Times magazine: “Actually, good news is kind of dangerous. It lends comfort to the comfortable. It ratifies complacency. Good news is essentially reactionary since it fortifies those in power. “On the other hand, the HappyNews.com position is that the site exists not to insulate people from bad news, but to provide a balance to what they believe is an over-emphasis of tragedy and depression that exists in the traditional media. They point out that HappyNews.com actually links to other news sources from their site and encourage people to seek a balance in their news consumption.
=News Sources=The site gets its content from three sources:1) From the
Associated Press through a license of their stories2) Through
citizen journalism 3) Staff-written features and
editorials .The site is presently a news source for news.google.com
=Trivia=The “daily”
horoscope on the site never changes, it always says “Good news! The stars do not control your destiny, you do.”=External links=
* [http://www.happynews.com HappyNews.com site]
* [http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_081905_goodnews.html The Silver Lining] Byron Reese, the publisher of HappyNews, interviewed on NPR's "On the Media"
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092302004.html HappyNews: Where the beat is always up] AWashington Post article on HappyNews.com
* [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-11-happy-news-site_x.htm?csp=34 Website takes a happy approach to the news] An article fromUSA Today on HappyNews.com
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