Today newspapers and phone apps that update you about the happenings around the world sets off a very negative vibe and a sense of pessimism early in the morning publishing news that is often gruesome and gloomy. Being perpetually tuned into the news is not fun. Important, perhaps, but usually not particularly good for your outlook on humanity. Google, one of the world’s principal supplier of news, is taking a small step to make things better.
Google Assistant is testing a new feature that will only feed you positive stories. Just ask the Assistant “tell me something good” and you’ll be greeted with a curated summary of positive stories that might just brighten your day. The good news comes from the Solutions Journalism Network, which is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that curates positive news from a wide array of media outlets. It is an organization that has partnered with newsrooms like NPR, Huffington Post, and PBS to spread best practices for its optimistic brand of journalism, and 17 different universities use an SJN-specified curriculum. As an example of its successes, the SJN details an occasion when a newspaper motivated an entire community to decrease its rate of infant mortality.
Google recognizes that this venture won’t necessarily fix everything, but it still finds exploring the experiment worthwhile given our current media landscape. If you want to give this a test run, just use any device with Google Assistant, such as a phone or Google Home — the worst thing that could happen is that you’ll hear something good.
