[gfmucci]

How many times have we heard ourselves or others say "all you hear on the news is the bad stuff - why can't they write something positive?"* Most news media make their bucks (and attract their jaded audiences) by either making bad news worse than it is (weather reporting), or slanting positive or neutral events toward the negative.* News consumption is much like movie consumption.* I recently noticed that the professional movie reviewers tend to give the worst ratings to PG-13, PG and and G movies, and the best rating to the R and worse while the occasional movie goers give better ratings to the PGs and Gs.* (check out Yahoo movies.)* Why is this?* Movie reviewers, those who immerse themselves in the trade - are jaded - they require increasingly violent, increasingly sexual, increasingly wierd to engage and excite them.*

News is similar.* Todays local paper (not TV's, Hallelujah!) reported on our annual State of the City event where the Mayor factually highlighted and celebrated the several dozen major successes of the City during the previous year.* Our local papers' account?* The editorial cartoon featured a man handing out "rose colored glasses" as the Mayor was speaking.* This negative spin is all that the majority of residents of the City will know: good news turned sour as viewed through the negative lenses of the local newspaper.* This is the impression most residents keep and nurture.* And isn't this typical.

The Villages Daily Sun is different.* Unlike some other posts on this site, I absolutely find the editorial content of The Villages Daily Sun to be refreshing and welcome.* You can go anywhere for negative spin, exaggeration, and obsession with real or imagined horribles:* gossip mills, New York Times, POA (paranoid over anything), and most local newspapers.* The Sun reports the news - it doesn't obsess, distort, and grovel in it.* It obsesses over the best side of life - the positive, the engaging, the things that cause us to want to wake up in the morning.* To me, their editorial policy compliments the whole purpose of my moving to The Villages - to enjoy life.* I'm certainly looking forward to this non-negative positive immersion.* I won't need rose colored glasses.