July 10, 2025
Improve your optimism with Fix the News
Update: Please read my follow-up post. I no longer recommend Fix the News.
Fix the News does a pretty good job of describing itself, so I won’t try to create my own version.
There is a lot of good news out there, we just don’t hear about it. Not feel-good stories about pets and barbershops, but real, big picture stories of progress. Most of the mainstream news outlets miss this stuff. Partially because stories about disaster and division get more eyeballs, but also because the nature of progress is slow. It happens over longer time periods — and this doesn't fit the modern media's fast-paced, 24 hour reporting style.
Our goal isn't to be a comprehensive news source, but to play our part in mending the wider media ecosystem by being deliberately unbalanced. There are thousands of media organisations that excel at telling you about everything that's going wrong in the world. We're one of the very few that tell you what's going right.
I was a journalist for over 30 years, so I have a pretty good idea of why certain stories get bigger play than others. We needed something fresh and interesting every day. A big-picture item seldom works well as your top story.
But knowing there is more to the news than the outrage of the day is not enough. Where is the antidote? Fix the News, with its weekly summary of the good things happening in the world — and there are lots! — is the best I’ve been able to find.
Their weekly newsletter has summaries and links to dozens of stories. There never seems to be a shortage. Reading these stories has helped me become more optimistic and more enthusiastic about making my own contributions.
The newsletter is mostly free, but you can subscribe for $80 US a year for even more stories. Converted to Canadian dollars, this is a bit steep for me, so I’ve stuck with the free version. On the other hand, they say one third of the money goes to charities, so I might have to rethink that.
On top of this, there are ongoing fundraisers for charitable projects. This provides another avenue for those looking to find a way of doing good in the world.
The website does have a few oddities. For example, you have to click on a hamburger menu to switch between system, dark and light modes. It defaults to system, which I found almost impossible to read. Light mode is fine.
They also insist on opening a new tab every time you click to another section on the site. I find this weird and disconcerting.
That said, I actually subscribe to Fix the News via their RSS feed. The app I use, Reeder, formats everything quite nicely.
These quibbles aside, I highly recommend Fix the News to anyone looking for a break from doom-scrolling.