I didn't know how to title this but what if you didn't want to become pray to doom and gloom headlines and still be kept updated as to the world news?  You use a news aggregator.

Yes, the traditional printed news media, and now the multimedia news world is in a sad shape.  And it can't blame much but its owners for cutting costs right down to the journalist staff.  It's not hard to wonder why less and less people read the news.  I picked up a local paper from Long Beach, California and the Wall Street.  Bad news city!

The local newspaper was easily 80% negative news and I felt crummy after reading it.  I felt ever so slightly better after reading the Wall Street Journal because, at least it covered world wide news.  Still, both were heavily negative.  I felt heavy, sad and down after reading them.  I didn't understand why until I quickly glanced at the two newspapers and saw the majority of the titles were depressing.

It reaffirmed why I use aggregators to read my news.  I use Google's alert where I key in the news I am interested in and Bloglines that more or less does the same.  If I want to diversify, I go and read the headlines on the BBC and the CSMonitor.  And all in all, I can say I more or less know what is happening without drowning in shock and horror.

Do you ever have that feeling when you follow a certain type of news too closely and have tunnel vision?  You go to a party and every talks about different things you were not aware of?  You realize you've been living shock shelled and for no good reason.  Breath in, look up and get an overall view.  Newspapers and TV media are not covering the facts.  I read somewhere that there are about only 3% of "bad" people out there.  It makes you wonder why the news insists on covering 95% of the time those 3% of the people.

Without me…  I have a coach for my reality check