Tuesday, February 02, 2010

What If Nothing Bad Happened?

I realize that this is Foolishness of the first order but let your mind wander with me a moment…

We all know by now that the people in the news reporting business truly believe that Good News Is No News. Most of us have heard the defense for this line of thinking which goes something like this …
It is not of any interest to the reading public to report all the cats that did not get caught up in trees today.

They may have a point. A newspaper that reported only good news would probably not survive. It still does not keep me from yearning to see a few good news headlines just for the heck of it.

If you have read this far, it means that you did let your mind wander with me, as I requested in the first paragraph above. Please stay and mind wander with me a little longer…

What if one day the newspapers of the world woke up and found there was No Bad News To Be Found Anywhere. What would they do? …
• Would they not publish a paper at all?
• Would they be required by union contracts to publish their newspapers and we would find bundles of newspapers with nothing printed on the pages thrown on our front lawns?
• With tears in their eyes, would they publish only good news?
• Would they falsify some bad news?
• Would their collective heads explode?

A Day With No Bad News might be interesting, it might be boring, it might be neat but I really think it would be all of these possibilities.

Would I kid u?