Q & A With: Geri Weis Corbley, Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Good News Network

On Tuesday February 21, 2017; I got the opportunity to do a Q & A interview with Geri Weis Corbley, The Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Good News Network. For almost 20 years Good News Network has made it their mission to spread good news and prove that positive news is valuable. During this Q & A Geri and I discuss the start of Good News Network, The effect of positive news, and why it’s barely noticed in news media.

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/more/about-us/

Me: What influenced you to want to pursue creating a good news network?

Geri: Well it’s an interesting story, I was in the news business in D.C. I was actually on a T.V. crew that covered the congress and the white house and the meetings. And I knew right away, only worked there a month out of college, and could see that they chased a lot of the bad news, and it was like “Where’s the good news?” and I said to my colleague “There should be a good news show.” And he says “It won’t sell. Good news doesn’t sell.” So I never mentioned it again to anybody in the business because I didn’t want to see any downplay like that, or have my ideas shot down as I should say. But I thought to myself now that’s not true I bet it’s not true, because Oprah Winfery’s show has the angel network and Readers Digest was a very popular magazine at the time and they had hero stories on the cover all the time. Actually it was the number one magazine I think at the time, so I didn’t believe, but fast forward ten years I quit the business to start a family, and then when I had three children ages six, five, and three, I was listening to NPR Radio News and they were describing the Bosnian War and these woman being raped and my little boy, Jack, was at the kitchen table and I thought “Wait a minute, when does he start hearing what’s all going into his consciousness.” And really, that good new idea stuck with me the whole time so, that around when the world wide web was starting and the time there was no blogs, certainly no YouTube, no google, no anything and I said I can create my own website, and im going to call it good news network, just like cable news network, its going to be GNN instead of CNN. So I did it, I made the website myself, back than it was a simple html website and I updated it every week. But then I had a print newsletter that I gave to homeless shelters and prisons that had good news and that people can subscribe to for $25 a year. But then that got to hard and in 2003 I dropped that and then for revenue I tried to do a subscription model for a while. I asked people, I had a stand and would ask them, “would you pay for good news and how much would you pay for it?” and 76% of people said they would pay, so I did put up a pay wall for a while, but then when social media got strong and Facebook was getting bigger and I realized that I need to be sharing links for free and get more traffic that way. By then I way putting up ads on the website to earn money. So I opened it up for free and now it has a PBS type of model where you can pledge to donate the money and I’ll give you some free downloadable gifts, but that so I do get income from that every year but also advertisments is the main piece of revenue that I get.

Me: Ok, so was there a lot of difficulty during your first couple of years of doing good new network?

Geri: Well, I had to get over my fear, fear that I would fail, or fear no one would listen or that I wouldn’t do it well enough. But once I did step into doing it was good at it, and so I started out slow very slow, in fact I started updating only once a week, back in ’97 ’98 and then I just started doing it more and more as the kids grew older and they would go to school or something like that. Umm I learned so much, so anything that was difficult I learned from it and learned a better way to do it and new ideas, so it’s a huge learning opportunity to hold 20 years since then, we’ll be celebrating our 20^th anniversary in August. So it’s been a great ride.

Me: While you were doing good new network, what kept you motivated to continue to do it?

Geri: Easy, it’s the testimonials and the feedback I got from readers, that’s what keep me going. The feedback from people who would have anxiety and panic attacks and depression, writing to me saying: When I found your website, and started reading good news everyday (because I started put it up daily in the 2000s about 2006 I starting updating everyday) and they said that they didn’t have panic attacks anymore and they weren’t depressed anymore and they saw that life was good after all and those type of emails where people are getting better and other emails about parents who say that: I’m happy I can share this news with my children, and teachers writing to me saying: we have a current event program or study and we didn’t want to have our kids going to CNN, so we’re so glad you’re there o we can send our kids there. So those type of emails keep me going.

Me: I read on your website that, one of missions are to prove that good news is valuable and that it sells. So my question to you is do you believe that though out your almost 20 years of doing good news network, that you have achieved that goal or do you think there’s still work to be done.

Geri: Yes, I do believe I has, I think I knew before anybody else but now the media companies know that good news sells as well. The New York Times did a study and the found that stories about awe inspiring phenomena are so much likely to be shared on social media, so they benefit more so they found that good news and science news sells more than tragedies. And I’ve seen over the years that there’s more and more good news in the mainstream media because they found out that, “Oh! Good news in popular.” I’ll give you an example, NBC nightly news for one week thy decided to do a making a difference segment every night, so at the end of their news cast they featured somebody who was making a difference in their community and the producers of that said they had never gotten so much mail about news before, and so they decided to make it a regular feature, that would be once a week without sell is that they would have a making a difference segment so I think I had some hand in it on moving the wave and riding the wave early and showing people that good news does sell, and the media companies found that out too.

Me: If there is any, is there more that you would like to do with good news network?

Geri: Yes, Sure I would like to become a 24 hour television cable network, we could start by having a weekly television show, and now that I live in California I’m nearer to the people that can make that happen, I think that I would love to start bringing it to television, I would also love to have a podcast, I hope to maybe start a podcast in 2017 so people can enjoy the good news while they’re jogging, or on their canoes, on their iTunes.

Me: Some of these next few questions are gonna be about your early days when you were working with these other news outlets. During some of your budget meeting how often did positive news pitches get approved?

Geri: Well I wasn’t really on the editorial side, I was a video tape editor and a cameraman, well camerawoman I guess if you want to call it that, so I wasn’t in on the editorial meetings. However we found that local news often pitched and paid for stories about their local people coming to Washington, you know they’re visiting the white house or they’re visiting the capital or their girl scouts are being honored at the white house or their kids are going to the science fair at the white house, so those stories were the good news stories that I covered.

Me: Ok, and how often did you do those type of stories?

Geri: Oh my goodness, I would say that the ratio would be about five to one, five being the bad news, or six to one. I’m also talking about we would cover hearing on capitol hill and what the congress was doing, so idk if that would be considered bad news, but many times it’s not good news, so that’s in the six if I was to do a ratio. It might even be ten to one.

Me: What do you believe makes positive news stories kind of less newsworthy than these stories that have a negative aspect to these news outlets?

Geri: Well, I believe that news editorial broads look for conflict, because conflict inherently makes an interesting story. So they look for the bad news because it’s sensational and people might be more interested in conflict than in peace. However I also find that the overcoming difficulty stories, the solving problems and overcoming difficulties also has an element of conflict in it, because it’s someone overcoming their circumstances, or it’s a business overcoming their problems, so there is a bit of conflict and that’s what I think makes them compelling.

Me: When you decided to finally to start good new network, was it a moral decision or was it more of a personal decision.

Geri: I really wanted to do something good for the world, and I considered it my community service, you know instead of going to a soup kitchen to service the homeless, I did the good new network because I knew that it would do a lot of good in the world. If people see other people turning in money they found or see good people doing good things, they are more likely to do it themselves because they’re seeing the example. So I did it for that reason, but also I just had an itch that just wouldn’t go away like really it was like a bugaboo that was in my head, that there should really be a place where all the good news is in one place, because there’s good news in the media, but they’re hard to find because it’s scattered all over the place, at the end of the paper or the end of the broadcast. So I really had a strong… well call it a divine discontent, like I was so discontented that there wasn’t good news that, that’s what made me do it, that was the biggest factor. It was my purpose on earth.

Me: What do you feel is your biggest accomplishment you’ve had so far with good news network?

Geri: Well in January of 2017, we published out 18,000 story, I think that was a real achievement. We’ve hit a milestone there. However the other thing that we did that was really great was that we created these apps for the phone. And if you want to see some testimonials about good new network, just go on google play where android app is or iTunes and read the five star reviews, there’s hundreds of them people just love it, they get notifications throughout the day whenever a good news story is posted, and they’ll pop up on their phone, and see the headline and they can click on it. I feel those two are great accomplishments. That and the fact we are healing the planet because people mental health is improving because the read good news network.

Me: Ok one last question, you said you started good news network around the time when the internet was starting to get some type of popularity. How has the growth of the internet benefited good news network?

Geri: Oh well I think the social media was biggest benefit, because people was sharing with their friends who didn’t know about good news network, and Facebook made it so easy to share. So that was our biggest boost we got through the internet. When I first started our website, Washington Post wasn’t even on the internet, yeah so it goes way back.