January 13, 2012

"I'm delighted to announce the launch of HuffPost Good News..."

"... a new section that will shine a much-needed spotlight on what's inspiring, what's positive, what's working -- and what's missing from what most of the media chooses to cover."

How perfectly insipid. It's like Martha Stewart, but for news. Is it bad of me to feel like this is meant to work as news for women? Relatedly, my father used to insist that the news should be entirely about people who died. Dying being such a profoundly important matter. As long as anyone has died — and there's never a day when no one dies (if there was, would we notice?) — that's what the news should focus on. I tried to say, but wouldn't that be monotonous? It's banal, isn't it? Why not report that people are breathing? The real question is: What are people doing that's different and important now, not who did something in the past that makes it seem significant that he has now died? It's that thing, that for the newly dead makes us care that he has now died, that we should be learning about now. No, whatever that thing was, death is bigger. Death is the news. The news for men.

AND: Here's HuffPo's news for men: Weird News.

31 comments:

Russ said...

Totally unsurprised that 'good news' will be featured at HuffPo as we roll into election season.

ms57 said...

This seems like an update to Monty Pthon's sketch on the news on the news for parrots

edutcher said...

I'm shocked, shocked.

This is the sort of thing you'd expect to find at a...,
a ... Christian site.

And what Russ said.

PS Don't you need live people for the news?

I mean, dead people can't make anything anymore.

holdfast said...

"— and there's never a day when no one dies (if there was, would we notice?)"

Interestingly, this topic was recently covered in Torchwood: Miracle Day.

Let's just say it was ugly.

http://www.starz.com/originals/torchwood/Pages/title.aspx?src=starz_mktg&med=referral&cmp=torchwood&cid327

Anonymous said...

Nobody wants to read good news all the time. I give it 2 months.

bgates said...

Totally unsurprised that 'good news' will be featured at HuffPo as we roll into election season.

Gonna look strange when they shut it down mid-November. I wonder what they'll replace it with?

Skipper said...

Let's see, for what is "good news" a euphemism?

Anonymous said...

I give it until January 20, 2013, after which good news will be a thing of the past.

Carol said...

Oh let me guess: stores about nice white ladies helping minority children to escape the ghetto - ?

Maybe Chelsea can write for them.

Wince said...

Althouse: "No, whatever that thing was, death is bigger. Death is the news. The news for men."

HuffPo Weird News, fair and balanced?

"'Boy's Mysterious Accidental Hanging Stuns Community' will play after the ad..."

10-Year-Old 'Flip The Circus Boy' Dies In Accidental Hanging (VIDEO)

traditionalguy said...

The Huffpost has a Gospel section now? This is a sign of the end of the world.

traditionalguy said...

Dead people being resurrected is called good news.

Dying is usually called a tragedy. And then the USMC pisses on you.

edutcher said...

Couldn't see anything in Weird.

I guess that's what makes it weird, huh?

bgates said...

The Huffpost has a Gospel section now?

"Good News reported by people who have no business talking about Good News".

And then the USMC pisses on you.

They won't piss on me, because I'm not a murderous terrorist sonofabitch.

Anonymous said...

Rumor has it Chelsea Clinton will need work soon, and she has experience in goofy, maudlin, feel-good "news." What say Arianna Huffington is creating an entire new arm of her business just for her?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Good news for some people is bad news for others.

Depends on how you look at it.

For example: good news for Obama and the Dems on their mandatory government health care take over. Not so good for the rest of us.

Freeman Hunt said...

like the man who rescued stray puppies from a ditch in Afghanistan and found a home for them in Canada

There's Deepak Chopra, who takes a glass-half-full approach to some of the world's most devastating crises with an eye toward identifying solutions

an exclusive video and post from Incubus singer Brandon Boyd on how art can spur environmental activism

LOL

It's the new Hell section.

cassandra lite said...

Good news: Arianna Huffington was today deported to her native Greece, where her bond rating was immediately downgraded to junk.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'm not a cynical person. I'm reliably optimistic in life. This new section isn't about good news; it's about inanity.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

I guess when you're continually scooped by the National Enquirer it makes sense to become more like them.

Jaske said...

Death is a slow process of the old thinking passing. Life is a maelstrom of ideas. This week, the thought of rare planets was crushed by discovery.Ennui vs kinetic.

caplight45 said...

They can report what Aunt Bee and Clara are baking for the annual pie contest and this weeks lunch menu at Mayberry Elementary.

Freeman Hunt said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Freeman Hunt said...

"News Done By People Who Should Not Be Doing News."

Don M said...

The day when noone dies is the day when you have already died.

Chip S. said...

there's never a day when no one dies (if there was, would we notice?)

Yes, but apparently we'd lose interest after two months.

Phil 314 said...

Arianna is SO media savvy.

Skippy said...

Newspapers, in their feature section meetings, have always talked about having the need for happy news. This is no different. And the problem always was that happy news isn't very interesting and that conflict, as it does in fiction, makes non-fiction interesting.

Jason said...

It's about advertising. Good news kinds of stories are much easier to generate from a press release.

If a company knows it can get some favorable press once in a while from a press release, it's more inclined to bump up its ad spend.

I looked at that, too, when I was a media buyer. Ads and favorable editorial have synergy. But loading ads up in a media outlet that's trashing the client in their pages was a waste of money.

The 'good news' section will help subsidize everything else.

Plus, if you can determine that one section of your site has 90 percent women viewers, and the rest of it is 50/50, you can place ads accordingly, and improve your click through rate.

I don't care for that kind of news, most of the time (unless it's about military people and families), but I don't mind it. The Internet is a big place, and at least it's not another dating advice blog with a 22 year old sex columnist.

SGT Ted said...

The whole "good news" thing is just more pretentious leftwing horseshit. They'll trumpet any advance of socialism or winning the freedom for some communist terrorist from the 60s as "good news". Tax cuts and more freedom from government will always be "bad news" unless a union or a minority is involved.

SGT Ted said...

Dead people being resurrected is called good news.

Dead people voting for Democrats is always good news too.

tw: hymee. Is that racist?