1) Don’t make someone else’s personal pain about your emotional experience. Humans do pretty crappy things to other humans. The truth is, we aren’t entitled to feel good about the news all the time—especially not when the news is asking us to relate to human tragedy.
2) The more important the news is, the more straightforward you should be in telling it. This holds true for the headline as well as the actual reporting. In terms of the news, if the most straightforward headlines aren’t enough to sell the most important news of the day, then maybe it’s because you aren’t actually covering what’s really important.
3) Stories can be worthy without being upworthy. What CNN seems to be forgetting is that it’s not impossible to get these stories the views they deserve without the Upworthy treatment. Take the sheer number of debates you’ve read this week about Dylan Farrow. No one wants to have that conversation. But it’s being had because we recognize that sometimes we need to put on our adult pants and have adult conversations about the serious stuff.
