“In a campaign to raise money for the people of Darfur, two high school students, using social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, have raised more than $300,000 from students at 2,000 high schools, showing the strength of banding together over the Internet.” (USA Today)
Students Feed Homeless Despite City Warnings
“For nearly two years, students, parents and staff at the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School have handed out food and supplies to the homeless once a week on the sidewalk near JFK Plaza in Philadelphia.” But last Thursday the new city manager asked them to stop and sent police to the scene. The school refuses to give up their program which has sparked discussions on the best way to help the homeless… (Inquirer)
Encouraging Girls to Pursue IT Careers
Girls are gathering at Microsoft offices this summer to attend DigiGirlz High Tech Camp, day-long events designed to dispel stereotypes of the high-tech industry and encourage girls to pursue IT careers. DigiGirlz gives young people a chance to experience firsthand what it is like to work in a company on the cutting-edge of technology. One participant came away saying, "I thought you had to be a geek to work here, but this camp changed my mind."
4 Baby White Tigers Make Debut in Mexico Zoo (Video)
A litter of 5 Bengal tiger cubs – 4 of them white – have made their debut at Mexico’s Guadalajara Zoo. Watch this AP video feed showing the cubs romping around mother. (1:06)
Major League Star Helps Return Baseball to Inner Cities
(Minneapolis) Twins outfielder Torii Hunter worries there will be no African-Americans playing baseball in the next 10 years because black kids aren’t playing it. In Minnesota he is encouraged by a unique program, Return Baseball to Inner Cities, which also teaches life lessons to inner city kids thanks to the Twins Community Fund. Click for Video (4:14)
Study: Men Talk Just as Much as Women
One goal of the Good News Network is to break stereotypes of society that no longer serve. "An article in this week’s issue of Science blasts the popular myth that women are more talkative than men." After listening to the daily chatter of almost 400 college students, a new study that claims to be the first of its kind found the rate of talking was nearly equal. "The stereotype of the ‘female chatterbox and silent male’ needs to be debunked. Not only because women are harmed by it, but because men are disadvantaged by it, too," said University researcher, Matthias Mehl…
Autistic Savant Draws Rome After Viewing it Once
Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire is a “star among savants.” In the film Beautiful Minds, A Voyage into the Brain, he is introduced as “The Living Camera.” As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. When he was 11 he sketched the entire city of London in detail after viewing it only once from an airplane. The film tests his ability to draw the city of Rome in panorama after seeing it for the first time in a helicopter. He is given three days to complete the drawing and succeeds brilliantly in rendering exactly the number of columns and archways. (Video 5:15)
Steven lives in London. After studying architectural drawing, he opened his own gallery. His published works are in print and touring the world on exhibit. His website is full of his art : www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk
Other films have been produced about Steven, which he lists here on his site. This film was made by Colourfield Productions, Dortmund, Germany.
Live Earth Concerts on 07/7/7 Tune in Worldwide Climate Message and Music
Plan this Saturday, 7/7/07, to check in with Live Earth, a 24-hour concert taking place on 7 continents that will bring together more than 100 musical artists and 2 billion people raising awareness for global warming. TV, radio, and Internet channels will carry the music and messages of Bon Jovi, Shakira, Madonna, The Police, Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews and dozens more top acts, no matter your taste in tunes…
McDonald’s to Recycle Cooking Oil to Power its Vehicles
“By converting the cooking oil from its 1,200 restaurants in Britain into biodiesel fuel, McDonald’s said it would save 1.5 million gallons of gasoline.” The new fueling program began this week with a conversion of 20 company trucks and next year promises to convert all 155 of the delivery fleet to biodiesel. (Reuters News)
Subaru Factory Sends Nothing to the Dump for 3 Years
The Subaru assembly plant in Indiana celebrates three years of operation without taking out the trash. It sends nothing to a landfill. Raw materials go in, cars – and little else – come out. Subaru says it has recycled or reused 97 percent of its excess or leftover materials like steel, plastic, wood, paper and glass. The other 3 percent supplies electricity for the Indianapolis area through the steam generated and captured during incineration.
Ode to the Founding Fathers on the Fourth of July
Editor's Blog –
Happy Independence Day to all Americans!
Do you remember the French newspaper headline the day after 9/11: We Are All Americans Now... I hope we can rekindle that feeling of community around the world, because Americans deserve to be thought of with warmth. Despite our government's dreadful mistakes over the years, the torch still burns faintly, the reminder that we can lead wisely, we can bring hope, we can embrace the world. I thank our lucky stars for the confluence of brave and thoughtful farmers and craftsmen who landed in Boston and Philadelphia and Jamestown as settlers, who spoke out for religious rights, freedom of speech and independence of thought…
Your Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again
WebMD has a neat list of 22 energy boosters to bring more lift to your life. The likely suspects are listed, like drink plenty of water and eat breakfast, but there are others, like playing some tunes, giving up the sweat suits for clothes that make you feel successful, and decluttering a corner, that you may not think of. Science backs up the notion that what you feel in your body has a lot more to do with what’s in your MIND than we used to believe. Thanks Andrew, for the link!
Good Golf Raises 400K to Replace New Orleans Books
A $390,000 donation to the Gulf Coast School Library Recovery Initiative will go a long way toward putting books on the shelves and hope back in the hearts of kids and their teachers in the hurricane-devastated region, thanks to a unique PGA contest called Birdies for Books. For every birdie hole played at the April 2007 New Orleans PGA pro golf tournament, $100 was pledged to the Laura Bush Foundation library effort by tour sponsor, Zurich Financial Services.
China Closes Ozone Depleting Chemical Plants
China, the world’s largest producer of ozone depleting chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) and halon, has shut down five of its six remaining plants and banned their wide use. The facilities were closed during a symbolic ceremony on Sunday organized by Chinese authorities and chemical companies that agreed to stop manufacturing chemicals harmful to the ozone layer.
Drop in Teenage Drug Use Welcomed in Scotland
"A support agency for addicts has welcomed figures showing a drop in the number of teenagers experimenting with drugs in Scotland." The number of 15-year-olds never to have used drugs rose 18% over four years. (BBC) The downward trend mirrors US teen drug use, which we reported here in January, dropped 23 percent since 2001.
Hasbro Donates 20,000 Dolls to Poor Kids in Zambia
Thousands of children living in poverty in southern Africa will receive baby dolls, thanks to a donation by Hasbro of 20,000 black Baby Alive dolls at the special request of US Ambassador. Hasbro has been supporting the work of World Vision in Zambia with a three-year commitment to help support 40 schools, train teachers and purchase trucks to help move supplies quicker through the region.
Shipping Lanes Near Boston Shifted to Protect Whales
"For the first time in US history busy shipping lanes have been changed to protect wildlife. This weekend, lanes near Boston Harbor were shifted to lower the risk of rare right whales being killed by ships." (AP)
Is The Media Really Biased?
A lot has been written about an apparent media bias — a Liberal bias because so many reporters donate to “Liberal causes”, a Conservative bias in radio because so many talk show hosts rule the airwaves with outrage. I believe the single strongest bias dominating American journalism, regardless of political inclination, is the allegiance paid and importance given to the notion that bad news sells.
Never mind the citizen and what is most important for their learning or understanding. Bad news sells, and that’s what matters most. The fevered race for corporate profits has biased the decision-makers within newsrooms toward the sensational and the negative, and readers or viewers are turning away in droves.
Even reporters are rebelling. Witness on YouTube, the on-air protest by an MSNBC news anchor who tried to burn her script after being given the Paris Hilton story as her news lead. (GNN story with video)
The constant drumbeat focused on what’s gone wrong in the world, with nary a mention of what’s gone right, is best illustrated by the Center for Media and Public Affairs study calculating that while the number of actual murders throughout the 1990’s plummeted 42%, American network news coverage of homicides jumped 700 percent during those same years. To any viewer of TV news, the country was growing ever more violent.
If it’s bad news, it’s headline news; if it’s good news, like the murder rate declining, it’s lost on page 23. This is the bias with which we should be concerned: the obvious play toward the sensational and the habitual publicizing of the worst examples of humanity.
A 2005 study by Bayer concluded that an overwhelming 93 percent of Americans wanted more good news in their media diet. 77 percent believed there was not enough good news offered by mainstream media.
No wonder people are turning to the internet for their news. A Pew research study found that while television still ranks first as a source of news among broadband users, the internet is catching up fast. Further, tens of thousands of people each year search on Google for “good news”, and most are rather surprised at what they find.
The #1 offering on Googles’s list for “good news” is a website that features all positive news stories, called the Good News Network. Started by a Virginia mom and former news professional, the website is now in its tenth year and serving over a quarter-million pages of good news each month. The site’s launch in 1997 filled a need that mainstream journalists are just now beginning to recognize.
In the face of a newspaper industry’s overall declining readership, the Grand Rapids City paper carries on their website a daily syndicated feed of headlines from the Good News Network. Next to the tab marked “Odd News” is now a tab heading for “Good News”.
Even some in the mainstream media are starting to realize that good news CAN sell:
- McClatchy Newspapers, the third largest newspaper group last year added a “good news” beat to their Washington, DC bureau and assigned a reporter to cover such stories full time. Now, occasional stories by Frank Greve are filed under a Good News banner on their website, and are distributed on the McClatchy-Tribune newswire, with headlines such as, “Violence against intimate partners down sharply”, “Fewer Americans injured, killed on the job”, and “Many patients who check into hospices to die, don’t”.
- NBC’s Nightly News experimented and discovered – lo’ and behold – good news is popular with their audience. Five nights in a row they featured stories of people who were “Making a Difference” in the lives of others. The series was so successful (the executive producer said they never had received so much mail) that they decided to continue periodically producing such stories and archive them on a special web page.
- NBC’s sister website and cable counterpart, MSNBC, now sports a regular internet column called “Wonderful World” that highlights several stories each week featuring heroes, rescues, or the odd happenstance of luck.
- KXTV-10 in Sacramento airs a weekly Friday feature called, Good News Good People, that spotlights people doing positive works within their community But these are the exceptions.
What will you and I hear and see most over the next days? Will it be a consistent choir of Liberal causes – or an ear-splitting cacophony of Conservative wrath? Maybe. What we are sure to hear and see will be celebrities out of control, fires and storms, bombings and cruelty. Thomas Jefferson said that the mission of the journalist should be to tell the truth about what is happening in the world. If the media only gives us one side, the negative, then we are not hearing the truth about society.
As the late Norman Cousins said, “If news is not really news unless it is bad news, it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nation.”
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Geri Weis-Corbley is founder and managing editor of the Good News Network. She lives near Manassas with her husband and three teens. Sign up to receive her e-mail of the Top Ten Good News of the Week at www.GoodNewsNetwork.org.
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Warcraft Online Gaming Community Rallies Around Boy With Cancer Who Makes-a-Wish
10 year-old Ezra, living with a brain tumor, was given his wish — and more — by the designers, artists and staff of Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the wildly successful online game, World of Warcraft. The Make-A-Wish foundation wanted to help grant Ezra’s wish to become the first outsider to create a new character for the game. Since the story broke in a local paper, the WoW community has rallied and cheered its newest star, whose father said, "I do believe it impacted the situation. It impacted his health and happiness." (OC Register – be sure to read the update) Thanks to my son Jack for submitting this story!
UN Nuclear Inspectors Allowed Full Access in N Korea
"North Korea’s cooperation was ‘excellent’, said a UN inspector on Friday after visiting a nuclear reactor with his 4-person team from the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was the first UN inspection of the reactor in five years and full access to all areas was allowed." (AFP)