Good news is no news!

Good news is no news! It's one of those bold statements in many press trainings that everyone can regcognize by just turning pages in a random news paper. War, crime, corruption and global warming just seem to dominate the headlines. It has now been backed up by a research from Dutch internet platform Zinfo.nl. They researched the main national dailies in the Netherlands and came up with free Dutch daily DAG being the most positive newspaper of the Netherlands. Out of every story, almost 1 in 4 articles in DAG is a positive story according to Zinfo. Non free Dutch newspapers score 16,2 per cent or less positive articles out of their total daily coverage. Well respected news paper De Volkskrant even scores less than 10 percent.

Now why is it that so little positive news makes it to the headlines? Surely companies must issue enough press releases with positive news from their organisations? So is it just journalists taking a negative approach then? Obviously editorial staff are overburdened by press releases from companies announcing good financial figures, new and exciting products or major deals with new customers. Good news is brought at editors' finger tips for them to reuse so why do we read so little of it?

Let's consider two things. Firstly, journalists always want to write their own story. It's what they are paid to do, they are not hired just to copy and paste press releases or quotes. Adding intelligence to stories by researching and talking to other sources may shine a new light on to a story. And although editors depend on companies for news, they remain critical and do not take a story for granted. Especially not when they feel companies are trying to misuse them for their own marketing agenda.

Secondly, what stories are readers most interested in? Just think for yourself what you would prefer to read: a story about your main competitor getting the deal of the century, or a story that explains why they just missed out on this important opportunity?

In general, news is only news when something unexpected happens. So if things go well all the time, that fact alone becomes business as usual eventually.

Does this means the media are not interested in good news? Not at all! It's just a matter of framing the news into the right story. So when your business is doing well when all of your competitors are not, this may be news in itself. You must be doing something different then!

Even negative news becomes boring eventually. Just take the forming of a new Belgian government as an example. I think almost every reader must now be longing for the good news of a new Belgian government taking up their responsibility ;-)

Richard