Wednesday, May 16, 2007

A day as the webmaster.........

What is it like to look for “good news” all day? As the webmaster for http://www.goodnewsnow.com/ that is what I do for about 7 hours a day. The rest of my day is updating graphics and checking web stats answering emails. I like to hear from our readers about news story ideas. I love it when they send photos. The people I tend to hear from are non-profit organizations that want to promote what they are doing. That is something we want to do.

I really like the arts so I would really like to have more stories about people in the arts, especially if they are involved with doing something for others. I like to hear success stories. There is a young musician from Ft Worth I have started to follow. His name is Daniel Hunter. He is 17 and is touring with Warped Tour and had his first CD out. I saw an article in The Star-Telegram last month and then this week Billboard. He just amuses me. I like it that he is doing so well. He reminds me of Johnny Depp in Benny & Joon


I think one of the biggest benefits I am receiving from doing the site is that when I am not amusing myself is how much I get to read and learn about all kinds of subjects. This includes a better understanding of the web and how things work here online. I am getting a great education.
The down side is what I call bad news days. That happens when events like the shootings at Virginia Tech takes place. All attention is on the tragedy and it is hard to find upbeat stories. I try to look for the good in what is going on. Sometimes I just give up and wait for the next day and work on some other aspect of the site or look for new news sources. So looking for good news can be depressing.

Here is my favorite story today. Search led to family, diary and a cause

It is about a man in Nazi Germany who realized he could not oppose the regime in the present so he kept a diary of events and his opinion to bare witness in the future. His grandson is a college professor who has translated the diary and is trying to get it published. They both want people to learn from the lessons of history.