'If It Succeeds, It Leads': Why the News Is Changing for Good

[Commentary] The media doesn't just mirror society, it moves it. What the media focuses on, and how it chooses to report, affects our thoughts, feelings, conversations and perspectives. By consequence, it plays a part in influencing our choices and actions too. Of course, it's essential to report the problems and dangers we face. And journalism as a watchdog -- exposing injustice, exploitation and corruption, and holding power to account -- is a function critical to democracy. But journalism's apparent theory of change, that by relentlessly focusing on what's going wrong society will be better informed and able to do something about it, is undermined by evidence of how news impacts us. Audience researchers have known for a long time that people want more good news.

What the industry is now realising is that this doesn't have to mean fluffy stories -- waterskiing squirrels and the like -- but it can be rigorous and compelling journalism about progress and possibility. The world is complex and multifaceted, and I don't pretend I understand it. But as a boy making my newspaper, and now as an editor, I do know the power of storytelling. Positive and constructive approaches offer a way to strengthen journalism, at a time when more than ever, we need a way of looking at the world that sparks the potential in us all.

[Seán Dagan Wood is editor-in-chief of Positive News, and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project]