It’s Not A Chore, It’s An Adventure!
This is going to sound obvious: getting out a Good News Roundup always starts with looking at the news. But what sort of news? Unlike a lot of the other diaries published here in the Daily Kos, our GNRs have a specific parameter: Good News! Anyone can come up with an “end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it” sort of story, but “Good News Finding” is a gift. It’s like panning for gold: patience, persistence, and thinking you know where to look! You never know where the gold nuggets can be found, but the stories are out there!
First, let’s consider our readership: these are smart people who want something cheerful, or at the very least, optimistic, and maybe just a little out of the ordinary. And I managed to slip that in without the least bit of toadying or attempting to curry favor.
We’re living through interesting times and right now that can be a god-almighty pain in the touchus. There are days that even I want to yell and scream and think seriously about breaking out a Louisville Slugger. The law, in its wisdom, prevents me from doing the last of these.
So I do vent, but in as positive way as possible.
What am I looking for when I do a GNR? Something happy. Something that might make someone think. Something that will hopefully make someone smile. Something that can even evoke a laugh from the reader.
That’s one reason why goats figure prominently in the material I produce. You can’t be mad at a goat. Unless you own one.
Sources! Sources! Sources!
I have a variety of news sites I like to look at as a general rule. These are the fishing holes where I drop my hooks and hope something strikes.
For the European news, I usually start with the Guardian, Agence Presse France (AFP), Deutsche Welle (DW), and the Local. The last of these is a news aggregator in English in several countries like Spain, Germany, and Norway. There are several other papers out there, but these are the first stops.
Then across the world to the Asahi Shimbun, the Japan Times and the Singapore Straits Times for Asian news.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also has good leads to follow up on interesting stories. I have to confess that I’m leery of Australia: that’s where Rupert Murdoch comes from.
Finally in the U.S., I look to the major dailies: New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle (online as the SFGate), the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune.
Add United Press International, Associated Press, Reuters, Slate, Axios, the Daily Beast, and Huffpost for taste. UPI in particular is my go-to place for odd news— they’re very good at “critter” stories! I have to admit there’s something about a good bug story!
I have to admit that, unfortunately, my local newspaper usually doesn’t give me much to work with: it’s a Gannett publication, with all that entails. Our “editor” works in Salinas, where she manages two other papers, and my hometown paper, the Times-Delta. (There’s proof of corporate consolidation killing the locals for you.) I think the entire reporting staff for our town of 130,000-odd souls is six. However, they did give me a story on rabid bats, so they’re not a total loss.
The Fresno Bee is better than our local paper at covering local stories, but there’s a paywall, alas! Sometimes I’ll sneak over to our public library and look at it there when my well has run dry.
Here’s a tip: if there’s a story covered by the majors from a smaller newspaper, always look to see if you can find the local news site: usually there’s more detail which has edited down by the larger paper. All papers have space restrictions, so go to the original source wherever possible!
For politics specifically, I like to look at Politico, the Hill, Mother Jones, the Nation, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, and Lawfare. I especially like Charles Pierce’s Politics Blog in Esquire, and Marcy Wheeler’s Empty Wheel, as well as David Cay Johnston’s website DCReport.
Just blew my cover as to bias there, didn’t I?
I also like to see what the folks on the other side of the hill is thinking, so if you have a strong stomach I suggest you peek at some of the conservative sites. Take these in homeopathic doses, though– fair warning! Two things: these are not very funny people; and there are a lot of angry people on those sites. While I will not mention these sites by name and I will not use their material in any of my articles here, I have to admit that there is a little devil in me that occasionally wants to troll them. The better angels have overridden this desire--- so far. Miserable troglodytes.
I think pictures are a must-have: they just tend to highlight the story, especially if you’re running with a theme. With the Internet, there is a banquet of good stuff out there: just get your attributions right! If I can find a topical musical video, I’ll throw that in as well! I do have one hard and fast rule: No Trump Pics!
Oh, and no spiders, either.
Methods and Means.
So, how does one of these Good News Rounups start? First, I try to find a theme. I had an awful lot of fun doing one extended comment based primarily on our President and pictures of shipwrecks! It just tied together so well! Even without a connecting theme, I go for a pattern whenever possible. Other GNRs are going to be “meatloaf:” a whole lotta ingredients baked into a single article. Hopefully it’s tasty!
After a news search I start the cut-and-paste job onto my off-site layout page. I use WordPerfect as my word processing program— it’s the program I use for my daily job for legal pleadings, and I find it more idiot-proof than MS Word, which I still consider a tool of the devil.
So, I find the story, type in the source and the website for the link, and paste the story onto my draft page. Then I look for a photo to accompany each story if possible, which gets stashed into the download file on my laptop: I’ve got quite a library of unused material, which will someday find it’s way into these pages! Another tip: Save everything! most things will wind up being used sooner or later. I then write the photo attribution on a Post-it note, and incorporate that info into the images section when I want to plug the photo/painting/image/graph into the story.
Once I have about six or so useable stories, I paste the whole into a draft diary and then the tinkering begins. I paste my links, find my pictures and put them in, make my story blocks, and so on. It sounds daunting, but it’s easy and fun. 2thanks walked me through my first Roundup back in April, and between doing the occasional diary and my extended comments, I’ve learned a basic competence.
Environmental stories are always important to me: once I found a story where a man made a world record-breaking dive as deep as possible into the Marianas Trench, only to find plastic garbage waiting for him. That itself that is a bitter commentary on our world. I also like to find stories about what people are trying to do to stave off the crises we’re dealing with; whether it’s planting trees in Africa or bringing species back from the verge of extinction such as the snow leopards in Mongolia. We get to see the best in everyday people as a daily contrast to the iniquities of some of our purported leaders. And that always gives me hope!
I trained as a historian once upon a time, so there’s nearly always bound to be something history-related in any Good News Roundup that comes off this computer.
Knowing a little history is a comfort, believe it or not: I have nearly 5000 years of dumb people with whom I can be annoyed, not merely today’s crop of cretins! History also helps one keep a certain perspective, especially if you know anything about the 3rd or 14th Centuries: now there were some truly nasty times! Having some history included in a GNR is also an opportunity to put in some more neat pictures!
Am I biased? Of course I am! Background, education, my job, life experience: all contribute to the writer you read. Ex nihilo nihil fit. I commend George Orwell’s excellent short essay “Why I Write to you,” and I’ll leave you to make up your own minds without further editorial comment.
Above all, I think I like doing the Good News Roundup and my “extendo-comments” because it is an active activity, unlike staring at the pundits on the teevee machine. That path can lead to madness, and I’m still a little too young to become a crazy guy yelling at the television. I find doing this very satisfying, and I hope you find the results entertaining and informative as well!
Once the Roundup is out there, the best you can do is sit back and wait: Will this Zeppelin fly? Fortunately our audience is both kind and receptive. One of the joys of getting a Good News Roundup published is to see the comments and the recommended list.
Vanity? Certainly! But also I delight in seeing a name on the rec. list which I haven’t seen before, and knowing that I caught another person’s interest, if only for a while.
Each of our Roundups are as transitory as the news itself. Topicality by its nature guarantees a short shelf-life. And so they live their mayfly lives before disappearing off the page. But they represent a snapshot of a moment in time, and the preparation and presentation is both fun and rewarding in itself.
I hope you enjoyed this, and, as I always close,
Have a Great Day!