“You Never Show Any Good News Stories”

How many times in my 30+ years in a newsroom was that declaration made by someone on the other end of a phone call? 

It always starts the same way: a well-meaning person calls their local station to let them know about their bake sale or dog wash for charity and begins pitching a reporter to attend the event. As soon as you explain that you’ve taken all the pertinent facts and will add their event to the assignment file for that day, they sense the call is about to end and that they haven’t made their point fully. So they restate the time, place, and location, and as you try to reassure them you heard each detail the first time, the statement they’ve wanted to say throughout the call blurts out. “You really should cover this because you never show any good news.”

During one of these conversations, I decided to get technical with the caller. As she continued to re-establish the validity of her news story, I pulled up a show rundown from the previous night and did a quick count of stories that could be considered “good news.” 

“So, just to give you an idea of what a typical show might contain,” I said, “at last night’s six p.m. show, I saw 8 stories that could easily be classified as positive. The three stories at the top of the show had a more serious tone.”

“Well, I don’t believe that,” she replied. “I watch every night, and there’s never any good news. It’s all shootings and stabbings.”

Then I detailed the stories in each segment: a groundbreaking for a new business, a community supporting a family who lost their home in a fire, a softball phenom at a local high school, and even a dog that rode a skateboard, among others. To be even more thorough in my research, I called up subsequent rundowns that depicted similar stacking. 

“Well, whatever,” she said. “It just seems like you don’t.” She hung up.

That caller is not a fluke. Most viewers perceive the nightly newscasts as a rush toward the apocalypse. Now that I’m years away from working in a newsroom, I see it too. If you actually sit down and watch a newscast (most get their news online), the gloom is real because viewers are exhausted and can’t take another point of frustration. We’re paying bills, keeping the house up, rushing to soccer games, running businesses, and so much more. Life keeps life-in…as the kids say.

There’s a country music song that says, “All I really need is a little good news.” That’s how we feel, even when reality shows us that our newscasts are chock-full of positive events. So here’s a tip for callers who want to invite a news crew to cover their event. Just schedule it for a Sunday. Dust literally blows out of the Sunday assignment file, and your favorite station would love to cover something local. They might even package it instead of a :25 voice-over. Oh, and be nice when you call. That newsroom person you scolded on the phone has likely taken at least 10 similar calls that day. 

In my next book (which is almost finished), Bekka encounters a caller with the same attitude. It happens on a day when Jax is away, and she’s scrambling to answer every call at the assignment desk, including one from someone who prefers to lecture rather than pitch.