Sean Dagan Wood is the editor-in-chief of a positivity-rammed magazine. I'm super interested in his magazine's idea of publishing only "positive news" and wanted to dig a little deeper.
(The full interview will be published online soon)
—
Dan R: “Change the news for good” is printed large on this latest issue’s back cover. Do magazine publishers have a responsibility towards promoting positivity?
Sean DW: I think all magazines should take responsibility for the impact of their content. That doesn’t mean they have to be positive like us, but I think we all have a duty to consider how the information we select, and the way we frame it, might affect people’s thoughts, feelings and actions.
It’s about taking more conscious choices around what we put out into the world as publishers and editors, rather than going along with accepted ideas about what a magazine should be. There is a culture in news journalism of focusing excessively on the negative, but this is counterproductive as it too often leaves people feeling hopeless and helpless. That limits our potential as a society, when there is in fact a bigger picture.
For us, we slapped our mission large on the back cover because it is at the forefront of what we do. We want to be profitable, we want to be the best at what we do, we want to reach as many people as we can and get their attention, and we want the magazine to look awesome. But this is all in service to our purpose of informing people in a way that is inspiring and empowering.
—
DR: What inspiring message or thought has stood out for you in this latest issue?
SDW: My favourite article in the latest issue is a feature about young conservationists—teenagers from the UK who are passionate about the natural world and about protecting it. Our editor, Lucy Purdy, interviewed them about how they feel about nature, and commissioned some lovely photography of them out in the field studying wildlife.
I didn’t anticipate how impactful the article turned out to be. I was inspired by how clued up and optimistic they are, and how—despite the environmental crises that they are inheriting—it is their love of nature that shines through and which drives them.
And despite that they are clearly digitally savvy, using social media to support their conservation work, the interviews and portraits we shot were really human. This revealed a different picture of teenagers than some of the stories we might usually hear in the news media, and it made me feel hopeful about the future in their hands.
—