So what does bad news mean?

There are so many things going on in the world that can make us freak out at any moment. If I told you all the horrifying things happening within a 20 mile radius of you with graphic images and scary titles you might be too afraid to leave the house. So when we watch the news and only absorb negativity that’s collected from around the entire world, that can wreak havoc on our view of life. It also doesn’t help that so many news stations select stories they know will make us angry and afraid so we will keep clicking (or watching). But this is not why we want to read the news. We want to know about what’s happening in the world, but so much of the bad news doesn’t do that. It doesn’t leave us informed, it leaves us miserable and can make us want to avoid all news and stay ignorant about the world for our own mental health. The problem is, if we try to ignore these problems, we don’t confront them and they can grow but if we confront them through the news we feel powerless. The news simply shows us horrible things happening and then gives us no way to help beyond watching more news. It feels irresponsible to ignore the fact that people are dying in a war somewhere or that a new disease is ravaging an impoverished country but even if we were maximally upset about it, we can do almost nothing to change the situation. 

For this reason, the bad news stories we cover are stories that are both important enough to care about and are possible to improve. At the end of every bad news (and sometimes good news stories) our writers post a little line or a link about how you can help the situation if you feel you want to make a contribution and not just be troubled by the news. This way you are empowered to be part of the solution to the problems you care about, rather than feeling stressed and helpless. In our opinion, bad news is only worth really caring about if you have a way of making it better. The world is too full of tragedies to care about each one and letting bad news ruin your day without having the ability to help serves no one. It actually makes your world a little worse because the news brought all that negativity to it. 

We want to offer an alternative so we have created a new criteria for what we think is worth knowing and what is worth ignoring. Like all our news, our bad news tries to focus on things that are worth knowing for longer than a few days. If there is a homicide or a dog locked in a car or a nasty fight happened in a bar, we won’t cover it. Our capacity to care about negative things is limited and shouldn't be eaten up by stories designed to make us scared and angry. Therefore, the bad news here covers unpleasant but important things that leave us better not worse off for knowing. Bad news for us means things that are moving our world towards a more dangerous, corrupt, violent, impoverished and all around worse place but when we are all consumed by negativity that also makes our world a little worse. We believe that the balance here is in covering bad stories in a calm and constructive way so you can know about what's going on in the world without having to be any more disturbed by it than is necessary.