A good-news column, as the season turns

Randi Kreiss

"Happy writes white,” the novelists say. Talk about a happy man or happy news and before you complete the thought, your readers will fall asleep. It was Tolstoy who glibly indicted happy families by saying “they are all the same.”
Reporters are schooled in the journalists’ creed, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Follow this rule and you’re guaranteed an enthusiastic readership.
Despite the advice, however, I’ve decided to write happy. Not that I’m feeling especially ebullient, but I am determined to listen for an uplifting note in a cacophony of disasters. I will challenge the perverse taste that turns readers to news of crime and murder, and I will find a thread of gold among the dross. I promise.
It would be easy to focus on the news that a band of terrorists (some in custody) is planning to bomb New York City, or that Taliban forces are now using bases in Pakistan to organize and strengthen. It’s so easy just to worry about the roadside bombs that are continuing to kill people in Iraq, or the gaping maw that lies before us in Afghanistan. It would be a cheap shot to read dire implications into the massive dust storm that blanketed Sydney, Australia, disrupting flights, sending people to ER’s and blotting out the sun for days.
If I were avoiding bad news, I would surely turn aside any discussion of climate warming, which threatens to submerge much of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, wiping out the country’s rice production and poisoning its fish farms. Also, I wouldn’t dwell on the swine flu laying low thousands and thousands of school children. And then there’s the you-can-always-count-on-it video from Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, celebrating 9/11 and promising a “jihadi awakening.”