Why is the news always bad? You asked, we answer

Violent crimes. Horrible tragedies. Corrupt politicians. Florida Man. It seems whenever you read the news, the news is awful.

As part of our Sound Off South Florida initiative, we’re answering reader-submitted questions. Most of them have been about aspects of life in South Florida other than your local newspaper, but a few of you want to know more about how we operate. One submission read, “Why doesn’t the Sun-Sentinel share more ‘good news’ stories? It seems the stories are always focused on the negative, which is a shame.”

Hey, they’ve got a point. It can seem pretty miserable out there if you take the news to be a sample of the typical world around you. But one of the primary things that makes something newsworthy is its novelty. The unusual gets written about, not the commonplace.

Along those lines, one of our primary roles is to serve as a watchdog to our community. It’s up to us to uncover when elected leaders are corrupt, incompetent or hiding the truth from the public and bring that to light. We take that very seriously — just look at our recent work on the Broward County School District’s response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

And while people going above and beyond the call of duty may warrant a story, we shouldn’t have to tell you when everything’s just working out fine with your government, or with crime and public safety. That should be your expectation.

Or, look at it this way: The horrible fatal accident that snarls traffic on I-95 might be news. Thankfully, the more common occurrence is that you drove home safely and got to kiss your significant other and have dinner. If that itself were newsworthy, we would be in a far worse place.

Further, we no longer live in the world in which we toss stuff in the paper and hope it appeals to readers. It’s the digital age, and we know exactly which stories our readers are choosing to spend their time with. We know how many clicks a story gets online, how many minutes people spend reading it, how often it’s shared on social media — heck, we can even tell how far down the page readers scroll. And we tailor our coverage to give readers more of what they want to read, based not on what they say, but on what they’re actually reading.

That said, we do try to bring you the inspirational story, too. We also cover local entertainment and sports. (Hey, it’s not our fault if the sports teams turn most of that into bad news!)

So thank you for reading, and please keep doing it. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that everything you’re seeing here is typical of the world out there.

Do you have a question about life in South Florida that you’d like us to answer? Go to SunSentinel.com/SoundOff.