American Notes: The Good Newspaper

Spiro Agnew, among others, has observed that the nation's media are dominated by doom and crisis; good news is no news, it seems. Now, for the Vice President and other frustrated optimists, there is hope—in the form of a forthcoming Sacramento weekly called The Aquarian Times, billed by Publisher Bill Bailey, a former adman, as "America's first good-news newspaper." The Times will ban ads for cigarettes and skin flicks. The first issue, ready next week, will list stocks—but only those that have gone up. The lead story will report that in the...