Keller @ Large: Plenty To Feel Good About In USA

BOSTON (CBS) -- After all these years in the news business, you get a little jaded about headlines and teases designed to grab your attention – click-bait, they call it online.

But one headline did catch my eye this weekend: "America is Coming Apart at the Seams."

That sounds ominous. And it turned out to be a column arguing that our endless red-state vs. blue state tag-team match is worse than ever and overwhelming all common sense.

The guy who wrote it used to be work for Rolling Stone, so I took it with salt. But its depressing theme and apocalyptic tone got me thinking about a common complaint I hear about my work and journalism in general – why do you always dwell on the negative? Why don't you focus more on good news?

Survival is part of the answer. A Russian news website experimented recently with good news, reporting nothing but for one whole day, going out of their way to put a positive spin on anything.

The result – they lost two-thirds of their normal visitor volume. Either people really don't want good news from us, or it just isn't effective click bait, or both.

I can't analyze the state of mind of Russian culture these days, but I'd be surprised if a similar experiment here, done with the right touch, would have a similarly disappointing result.

For instance, I imagine most of us feel pretty good about the news that thousands of people are demonstrating peacefully about policies of the state they oppose, that tens of thousands are giving freely in support of charities, and that we are having orderly transitions of political power.

It's good to live in a place where despite its problems, people care about one another and a process where the voice of the people is heard.

That doesn't seem quite like coming apart at the seams to me.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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