Opinion

Most of us have heard the saying “No news is good news”.

This can be interpreted two ways - there’s no such thing as good news (such a depressing thought), or maybe if there is no word about something, then that in itself is good news.

Here, at the Waitaki App, we disagree on both points.

The beauty of the app is, because it’s digital, everything is measurable. And apart from the occasional car crash and inclement weather story - we have found that overall, what you, our users and readers, want to read about is he tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata - it is people, it is people, it is people.

I love writing about people, and luckily for me, people seem to love reading about people.

Their triumphs and their challenges; their new businesses, their different cultures, their children, their interesting lives, their sporting battles and achievements; artists, entrepreneurs and the elderly.

Everybody has a story to tell, and I want to hear it - and so it seems, do you.

The app is privately owned, and not in any way affiliated with the Waitaki District Council and we receive no funding from them (no matter how many people on social media will argue with us over that - we are still right and they are still wrong).

But over the past two and a bit years we have been operating - and I have been writing the majority of the news stories - our statistics over and over show far fewer people are engaged with stories about the council.

So with our limited resources, and given I am for the most part the sole reporter here, I have mostly stopped writing them.

Occasionally there might be a new initiative happening - a positive project for the town, or an interesting new staff member who I will sit down for a chat with. And of course we will cover the upcoming local body elections (although, again, there is a chance the public interest will be low). 

Also, if you have an issue that is affecting you on a personal level and you don’t know where to go next, then feel free to give us a call.

But I am reluctant to get into the nitty-gritty of how these people, who I mostly believe are trying to do their best for the district they and their families also live in, deal with the impossible task of keeping the owners of 14,000 rateable properties happy with the decisions they have to make.

It is sometimes hard to remember that a loud minority, particularly on social media, does not necessarily reflect the views of a largely silent (and can I say, more evenly-tempered?) majority. And while council news is not officially bad news it appears to have a negative effect on people - providing fuel for another online barrage.

So, whether people consume their news with their coffee in the morning, or watch it with dinner at night - or choose to expose themselves to continuous online sources throughout the day - they can seek out the “bad news” in a million other places.

According to a 2015 study in the Harvard Business Review, people exposed to negative news stories in the morning were much more likely to report their day as unhappy, even up to six to eight hours later, compared with people who had been exposed to "solutions-focussed" stories. It also affects productivity at work.

Close to 10 years on from that study, with a far more toxic climate online, I can’t imagine things have improved much in that department.

Here at the app, while stories can’t always be happy - because life has its ups and downs - they can always be human, and hopefully uplifting in some way.

Maybe they will help make your day better instead of worse.