One way to analyze news

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Start to think about the way audiences FEEL while consuming the news. Are people cheerful, upbeat and encouraged? Or are they deprived of their optimism and morale? Here’s a simple way to analyze the news to understand audience response.

I) Count the number of positive and negative stories. Simple! Learn whether the subject matters in news segments and articles are cheerful, upbeat and encouraging, or demoralizing.

Be non-political in this analysis, and assume readers empathize with all political sides. So something cheerful and encouraging for one side is for them all, and something demoralizing for one side is for them all.

Cheerful, upbeat and encouraging stories will obviously include sports victories, equity market gains, consumer lifestyle improvements and improving foreign relations. (People smile on television in them. So you can arrive at a similar statistic by counting the number of televised smiles.) Demoralizing stories are usually the opposite of them, such as sports losses or foreign policy conflicts.

Extraordinary news days aside, people on average prefer cheerful, upbeat and encouraging news production over excessive negativity. There will always be individual news day exceptions, when something important happens that everyone tunes into. But on average this metric has correlated very closely with ratings for news channels and newspapers.

The reason it’s important to be non-political in this analysis is that some people quickly switch channels until they find something enjoyable on. Continuous moaning and groaning about the other political side gets boring quickly and costs viewers. Keeping people enthusiastic and inspired does not.

II) Then count the number of cheerful, upbeat and encouraging INDIVIDUAL VOCABULARY WORDS in news story headlines and news story graphics on television. And compare what you get to the number of demoralizing words there.

Cheerful, upbeat and encouraging vocabulary words have positive connotations (such as the words “great,” “encouraging,” “enthusiastic,” “need,” “like,” “love,” “loving,” “joy,” “joyful,” “success,” “achievement,” “glorious,” “pleasure,” “flourishing,” “exuberant,” “beautiful” and “perfection”) and demoralizing vocabulary words are the opposite of them (such as “bad,” “failure,” “ugly” and “hateful”). 

Remember to only consider individual vocabulary words. Don’t consider larger amounts of communication, such as phrases, sentences or paragraphs. For instance, the phrases “not happy” and “happy” are the same with respect to the analysis. Both contain the individual vocabulary word “happy,” which is cheerful, upbeat and encouraging.  So the word “happy” is counted that way even if surrounded by negation. “Enthusiastic” and “not enthusiastic” both count as cheerful, upbeat and encouraging as well, for exactly the same reason.

A daily spreadsheet report might look like something like the following for the 24-hour news networks. The numbers in this example are completely made up but can become actual once the analysis is done by your own news organization:

FOX

Content:     

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               10           5

Vocabulary words in headlines:

            Cheerful     Demoralizing

               100         50

CNN

Content:   

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               10           5

Vocabulary words in headlines:

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               100         50

MSNBC

Content:

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               10           5

Vocabulary words in headlines:

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               100         50

OAN

Content:    

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               10           5

Vocabulary words in headlines:

            Cheerful      Demoralizing

               100         50

Cheerful content often boosts the moral of the country, and enhances the country’s reputation with other ones. Cheerful individual vocabulary words do, too. Cheerful individual vocabulary words usually “pattern” helpfully to the country as a result. (That’s the real reason why this page encourages news producers and presenters to keep stories and vocabulary words cheerful and upbeat.) But it’s coincidentally also amazing for the audience response and consequently ratings for news sources as well. When news producers and presenters do something great for the country, they do something great for their own ratings as well.

It’s very important that the free press use its freedom to report honestly and truthfully. And so these measurements are not the only ways to evaluate news organizations. Courage and ability to reveal truthfully what’s going on counts for a lot, too. But news producers and presenters are creating the morale of large audiences and consequently the country, and creating the image of our country with foreign leaders, governments and populations. And news organizations can keep the content cheerful, upbeat and enthusiastic to greatly enhance the country’s morale, and our reputation with other countries as a result.

The benefit to news organizations for helping the country is substantial, because what’s great for the country correlates very closely with ratings for news shows. For instance, unhelpfully demoralizing stories and demoralizing words perhaps became too great between the second half of 2020 through the first half of 2023. And there was a corresponding fifty percent decline in viewers of 24-hour news stations during the same time. (People will watch horror movies in theaters once in a while but won’t go to see them every day. Eventually they won’t want to see them anymore.) Half the audience tuned out of the 24 hour-television news cycle by 2023. In this writer’s opinion, viewers started shunning vitriolic coverage and yearning for hope and inspiration instead.

But that past isn’t what’s currently occurring, or what’s likely to happen in the future.  Late in 2023, the content and individual vocabulary word counts started to turn far more cheerful, upbeat and encouraging across all news sources. News producers and presenters kept telling everyone very truthfully in their opinion about what was going on with exemplary courage and integrity. But the morale of audiences started to improve as more cheerful stories and vocabulary words started to be published. What was great emotionally for the country, and what was great for the country’s reputation, has been excellent for ratings as well. News stations started experiencing improving audience response and a steady increase in viewers across all networks. Ratings are already up very substantially from their lows.

This writer understands that there are around 90 million cable subscribers who can watch 24-hour news shows. Currently ratings are low compared to previous years but have rebounded. The top three networks share around 3.5% of the potential viewers each day. News producers and presenters are improving communication enough for the audience size to grow even further from there. Perhaps the 24-hour stations will even grow their share to way over 15% on select news days later this year. This writer is optimistic but there is also a small but real possibility that linguistics progress won’t continue, and viewers will continue to tune out as a result.

Graphics and headline writers can almost always pattern “living,” “alive” and “survive” instead of “demise.” And it’s easy to work in encouraging vocabulary words in even the least encouraging stories. For instance, the following graphics writing contained a word meaning demise and is easy to rewrite:

“Joe Lieberman dead at 82.”

Here are examples how to rewrite it:

”Controversial policy maker gone. Survived by caring family.”

“Extraordinary Joe Lieberman lived an incredible life. Gone at 82.”

“Joe Lieberman’s amazing life ends 82.”

“Joe Lieberman, who inspired many, gone at 82.”

“Hero to liberals and conservatives. Joe Lieberman will be remembered fondly.”

In this writer’s opinion, the surest way for networks to send their audiences away and risk third place is to over use words associated with incitement/demise, such as “death,” “attack,” “war” and “invade,” because they create the cognitive discomfort that eventually causes viewers to tune out. And the surest way to achieve a growing audience and first place is to prefer cheerful, upbeat and encouraging words, such as “joy,” “love,” “peace” and “alive.” 

News producers and presenters are patterning exceptionally well nowadays. There has been an astonishing improvement in the news. There’s more work to do. But historians will fondly remember the work of news producers and presenters today if the progress continues.