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How do the U.S. national headlines affect you every day? Do you think you take it in stride, and simply hope things will improve? Can we read the horrors on the web and in our newspapers every day, and not be affected? More to the point, are we to believe that everything is really this bad? Here are seven of the best-known positive news sites online, and that is only a small fraction.

I will state the obvious right up front. We are all different. We are affected by our environment on different levels and in different ways. What might impact you or enrage you might not elicit the same reaction in me, and vice-verse. However, I do believe that as an overall influence, the news these past few years has undermined our spirit to some degree, and has caused our feelings to be very reactive. We seem to resort to hate feelings and words faster, criticize others more, tolerate perceived injustices less, and blame our governments on every level and especially in recent years, for everything that has happened. 

In general, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired of just about everything. We are up to the teeth with greed, “white collar” crime, industrial and corporate sleight-of hands, governmental shenanigans, and if we can’t think of anything else, the barking dog next door and the idiot neighbor who owns it.

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We truly are being pressured by loss of jobs, the cost of gas, the price of utilities and increases in food costs. We sometimes feel squeezed in every corner of our lives. Retirement seems like a dream, our kids may never see college, and if they do, they can never pay off the loan. In other words, the American Dream seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket. 

So, what has all this to do with the media? Because the media seems to be in bed with bad news since the recession began. Some might say it’s because since that time, that is all there is to report. Well, I disagree. Good news is still happening just as much as it ever was, we just don’t read about it unless we go searching through all the curl-your-hair headlines to find it.

I maintain that more so now than ever, the press on every level is doing it’s best to scare the daylights out of us, and keep us on edge in order for it to sell the news. We have all been through the checkouts at the grocery and at the drug store and been assaulted by the headlines of the Enquirer, the Sun and related tabloids. The headlines fairly scream disaster or scandal on some level. And oh, boy, do those headlines sell papers. People stand in line reading them. Our news outlets now seem to be hooking into this same (yes, I will say it) sleazy style of reporting. Many newspapers of late have gone out of business all over the world, as more people are getting their news on-line. But does good news really sell? Not nearly as well as bad news, I am wagering. 

We are being dragged through the unthinkable events a world away, in war zones we have no control over. Pictures of starving babies jump off the pages attached to stories of famine and disease. Corruptness, killing, crime, sex, gore, molestations, trials and end-of-the-world prophesies headlines cause the tidal wave of despair that many of us are feeling. What is this doing to our kids, who need reasons to hope?

This author can no longer read even the CNN headlines on-line without nausea instantly setting in. This is not a mental attitude – it is real nausea. And I have decided to stop reading most of it, as best I can. Instead, I am going to look for good news. I have found some sites that do report good news, and that is all they report. These are not religious sites, although those can be found as well. These sites report happenings in science, nature, the economy, health, and just about every category that is being left out of the REAL news, every day. Below I have listed several good news sites, and I hope you will take some time to go look at them. They will immediately uplift you, and cause an optimistic feeling to take root. These are not just “feel good” stories, these are real news stories that we now, apparently, must seek out, in order to believe that good news is just as much around as it ever was. I am changing my bookmark bar and “favorites” accordingly. I will be seeing you over there! 

http://www.happynews.com/

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

http://gimundo.com/

http://odewire.com/

http://www.newsun.com/

http://www.yesmagazine.org/

http://positivenews.org.uk/