Newswise — As the world was hurtled into the Coronavirus pandemic earlier this year and people faced a barrage of bad news on many news websites, a pair of students at Clarkson University in upstate New York made it their mission to change that, and see the good things that are still happening in the world today.
"A Positive Spin on Today's Most Important Stories" is the tagline for the new website, allgoodthings.news recently launched by Clarkson sophomores Maximus Powers and Selorm Bruce. Powers and Bruce started the website with the mission to deliver positive, clear, factual, and relevant stories to its audience while prioritizing their emotions. They hope their site will combat a constant flow of bad news for its audience, while also helping readers stay informed.
“Coronavirus had thrown me out of my dorm room and onto my mom's couch,” Powers said. “During that time, everybody was experiencing so much bad news, which anybody could see on the homepage of any news site. Ultimately, that's what makes the idea of spreading good news so appealing to us, people truly need it.”
The pair work daily to personally curate news stories from a variety of news sources that allows its readers to stay informed about what is happening in the world while offering that news in a positive light. Readers can also submit news stories to the site for consideration.
“People's expectations have shifted,” said Bruce. “Instead of waiting for the next random news (good or bad), people are now expecting that whatever will be in the news the next day, will be negative. With all that is going on, we want to show people the other side of the coin. We want to show them the positive events transpiring in the world at the moment that they are not aware of, due to all the negative things they hear all day.”
Both Bruce and Powers believe that now is the perfect time to bring their project to the forefront and offer consumers a more positive news experience.
“I knew we were in a brief window of history (and still are), where people's lives have completely changed,” Powers said. “It's so easy to look at these changes from a bad perspective, especially when that's how news sites present it. Now is the time when people need things framed positively for once. All Good Things has a big responsibility, to leave visitors feeling like ‘today is a good day,’ which won't be going away anytime soon. However, people have never needed that as much as they do today, which is why I knew we had to move quickly.”
Beyond creating a good news oasis for their audience, Powers and Bruce hope their website evolves into something more.
“My mission is to see All Good Things build a community where people can go to, for news that will help make their day,” Bruce said. “My hope is to not switch the narrative. I want people to understand that there will be ‘not so good news’ at times because more often than not, it is important. A simple way to put it is that I want people to be aware of the bad things happening, but to not get caught up in it so that they forget all the good happening as well.”
“I have so many hopes for All Good Things,” Powers added. “Though I don't need to hope, I know we'll build a community of good people, and that we'll help them have better days, every day. I also know how valuable this experience is to me. Building a business with the help of my business professor (Professor of Practice in Consumer & Organizational Studies Marc Compeau) has already taught me more than I could have imagined, and I have no doubt that it will continue to.”
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