Good news is no news

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32885, 7 April 1972, Page 8

Good news is no news

Public taste has changed since the Prophet Isaiah wrote 3000 years ago: “How beautiful upon the “mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good “ tidings ”. From Sacramento in California this week comes the sad news of the demise of a bi-weekly newspaper which took Isaiah literally and printed only good news. Only about 10,000 people in the United States and beyond wanted to read items such as a report that in one year 196 million people in the United States did not commit a criminal offence. Advertisers were not interested in a newspaper which concentrated on the absence of misdeeds among most of the community. Complaints that newspapers offer their readers too much that is alarming and unpleasant have received a cold commercial answer: most people prefer to read about the misdeeds of their fellows. The “ good news ” paper’s failure comes as no surprise to journalists and newspaper publishers. News, as the journalism manuals emphasise, is what interests people; news is a report of the unusual, the new, or the out-of-the-ordinary event. Sometimes it is pleasant; more often it is not; and once it becomes commonplace or * neutral information which strikes no chord of interest, sympathy, or alarm in its readers it ceases to be news. When Shakespeare’s Shylock asked Bassanio, “ What news on the Rialto? ” it was information about his commercial competitors, and preferably information of their mishaps, that he sought. A report of peaceful trade carried on calmly under a clear Venetian sky would not have interested him. So it is today. Where once the bearer of bad news ran the risk of being put to death by his hearers, now it is bad news which draws an audience. A sad moral might be drawn about contemporary tastes and interests; societies are being provided with the news they want to read. The Book of Proverbs described good news from afar as “ cold water for “a thirsty soul”. Today’s thirsts, it seems, can be assuaged only by stronger and less palatable liquids.