The Audience Demand for Solutions-Oriented News.
I often hear people in the news business say "We're giving our audience what they want." That's how they explain the never-ending coverage of crimes, scandals, disasters, etc. In preparing to launch this site, I have found two instances where the audience's demand for solutions-oriented news was actually on display for all to see. As I find more examples, I will report them here.
Meanwhile, listen up all you news people. Your audience is tired of "all problems, all the time." They want to hear about solutions too!
In the first example, an audience member at an Aspen Institute event on the future of broadcast news asks Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer to add news about solutions to the CBS Evening News. This video runs less than 2 minutes.

In the second example, Gloria Steinem tells Bill Maher that the surveys taken in advance of the start of her and Jane Fonda's new radio network show that people want to hear news about solutions. This video runs less than 2 minutes.

Why "Solutions News"? Because it's time we started talking about the real solutions to society's problems, not just the problems alone. And because many solutions - to educating children (and re-educating adults), to our healthcare crisis, to global warming, and to the challenge of international terrorism - actually do exist. Some exist in practice and others in theory. But they have - many of them - been figured out. They just aren't on the public's radar screen...not yet.
I am committed to seeing that the solutions that exist get on the public's radar screen. I am committed to seeing that the public at large - in America and the rest of the world - finds out just how much better our world can be. Because, once the peoples of the world realize how much better their world can be, I am convinced they will demand that their leaders give them that better world. And because - 21st Century capitalist that I am - I am convinced there is more money to be made than almost anyone can imagine from building the better world that we have the ability to build...the better world that is out there waiting to emerge - like the Phoenix - from the catastrophic beginnings of the 21st Century.

Going Green: In this introductory post, I offer the brilliant analysis of Tom Friedman regarding why the Green Revolution is critically important to our future. While Tom includes the obvious Global Warming perspective on why "going green" makes sense, he goes way beyond that to include Global War on Terrorism and Global Economic Competition perspectives as well. I invite you to consider this multidimensional perspective, which I believe makes "going green" the most obvious course change since Bill Gates changed Microsoft's strategy after realized that using the Internet was an important new trend.