I am one of the many people working behind the scenes to deliver you the a small portion of the news on Facebook.
I am engaged in helping build up our social media identity, something the paper hasn’t really done as consistently before. Of course, I’m not alone in this endeavor, as practically everyone in our building plays an important part in determining what you see on Facebook before the paper hits the shelves.
There are some lighthearted comments that get thrown around, such as the urgency for an Arby’s restaurant or a cheap steakhouse to be constructed in town. Other comments, however, aren’t as simple or light as those previous examples.
Some people are quick to point out that when the city is funding new initiatives, it could easily be spending that money on road repairs. As a coworker points out whenever we read those kinds of comments, often grants are used for those projects and those funds can’t be simply spent on the roads.
What really gets to me though are comments like these:
“What is it with Marysville anymore. All we seem to see and hear from that town lately is a … LOT of BAD NEWS! What’s up with this?”
This was left on a post we made about a young man arrested for impersonating a firefighter. I see this sentiment shared as comments on many other kinds of “BAD NEWS” posts we make, and it echoes outside of the internet. It’s no surprise to anyone when they hear about someone who has become jaded by the news so much because all they hear are negative stories.
We as a society get a lot of news and I believe we’re in quite a media maelstrom that older generations were never used to having.
In the past, people received their news from a handful of sources they deemed reliable, generally at the end of the day. Their worldview was smaller because of the lack of exposure to other news outlets and their exposure was limited to a newspaper or afternoon newscast.
Now that the internet has been deeply embedded into our lives, we can’t avoid the news. There are thousands of sources to engage with and the idea of 24-hour news coverage is a standard procedure among many organizations.
If someone wants to unplug from the coverage and try to find unrelated content on social media to unwind, they’ll be greeted by their wildly one-sided political friends sharing links to bad news every 50 minutes.
We’re flooded with news, and bad news sells on a national level. There are plenty of studies published that confirm people are more drawn to bad news, as well as more likely to remember bad news headlines.
Despite how grim that message is, I and the other reporters at the Journal-Tribune try to take great steps to show the people of our community that it’s not all doom and gloom.
While we do have stories about phony firefighters, drug smugglers or gruesome car accidents, we also balance that with uplifting stories. We have a resident who is an actor in a popular national television show. The Lady Monarchs softball team swept their opponents from St. Francis DeSales on Saturday. Eljer Park is getting renovations thanks to the help of a charity group.
One doesn’t have to go far to see we have good news floating around this town. Those aforementioned good news stories were articles we ran this week, so it’s not like we are swamped with bad news and good news is at a scarcity.
The best part is that we’ve been doing this for years, and nothing has changed. If there’s good news, we’ll publish it, and there’s always good news to tell.
Our stance as a newspaper shows we’re committed to telling the people what’s going on. It just so happens that when we do this, bad stories seem to float to the forefront of the community’s perception of reality.
I recommend taking a day off from social media and from consuming the news. Take some good moments to really zone out of the chatter and noise of politics and dread stories to appreciate the other things life has to offer.
-Jacob Runnels is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.