I’ve always been a believer in what you speak, you live. If you constantly complain, whine, and dwell on your life’s many low points, then that is what you will live. Coaches (both in sports and life coaches) will very often tell you that the only way you will ever see positive results is for you to have a positive outlook.
So why, then, do we surround ourselves with such negative images? Many in the media will point out that they have had this fluff story (their name, not mine) or that, but those stories are generally 1/10 the size of the negative, raw emotion pieces. TV and radio can be the worst, as they have limited time to present stories; it’s just a consideration that the media must deal with. The watcher can not skip a story they don’t like, they are force to endure it, or change channels.
Print and the Internet allow people to skip over things they do not like, but that has led to some rather outrageous headlines that are often quite misleading. Both formats have learned the wrong lessons from tabloid-style journalism and have so overused sensationalism that people have become inured to it.
Here’s my solution: we have worked to get a “Celebrations” page going for quite some time. We will commit to backing that page up and finding something, ANYTHING, to put in there. Be it an uplifting picture, a meme from the Internet, birthday wishes, promotion, marriage, or anniversary congratulations, anything positive. And you can help. Just call, email, chat, snail mail, however you like to get us the info and we will get it in the paper. We can even put a small picture in. We’re hoping everyone can help us be more positive.
We’ve often been asked why we don’t have birth/death/marriage records in the paper. We’ve been told that privacy laws have made that impossible. While we don’t believe this to be true and are still working to get that information for you, you can help by sharing what you know.
So what will it be Great Falls? Will we wallow in the mud of self-pity? Or will we show Montana and the rest of the world what can happen with just a little positive thinking? I encourage people to give us feedback on this story. What do YOU think?
Author: Andy Anderson
Andy is publisher of Foxys Publishing Co, as well as pressman, ad sales, distribution and sometime janitor. He occasionally makes a wild attempt at writing but quite often is seen running around our offices trying to "Get 39 million things done today..."
