About Us

'By an order of magnitude, the best source for positive news anywhere on the internet.' ~ Steven Pinker

Why we do this

'If it bleeds it leads' isn't just a mantra for tabloid editors anymore. It's a fundamental commercial reality for the media industry. A recent study of 23 million headlines from 47 popular news outlets showed that in the last two decades the share of headlines denoting anger increased by 104% and the share evoking fear surged by 150%.

What this shows is that it's not just your imagination: the news really has become more negative. It's making us all feel grim about the present, and hopeless about the future. Pessimism is so deeply ingrained in our media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on all our realities. It’s not breaking news anymore. It’s broken news.

What if we could fix it?

This newsletter, originally known as Future Crunch, was founded on the simple idea that another form of journalism is possible. For the past eight years, we’ve made the case that the news can delight and inspire, and our 55,000 readers are evidence that there’s a genuine market for this kind of content.

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.

What's our goal?

We want to understand progress as something woven into the fabric of human experience, not just a collection of statistics. We're as interested in the quiet stories of conservationists restoring islands as we are in breakthrough CRISPR treatments changing the course of genetic disease. We reject the doom loop of modern media, and are eager to disentangle real developments from crisis narratives. We think the news should also be about showing people what's working.

We're tracking the heroes eliminating diseases that once seemed unstoppable - from AIDS and malaria, to black fever and leprosy. We think the most important climate story in the world is what's happening in China, and everything else is just commentary. We're intrigued by geothermal breakthroughs in Nevada and floating wind farms off European coasts. We're optimistic that we can transform our energy systems, protect our oceans, and give the natural world space to recover - like the millions of hectares of desert re-greened in Niger without planting a single tree.

We welcome progress wherever it appears - in falling poverty rates in places like India, Indonesia and Bangladesh, in more meals for kids at school, in rising education access for millions of girls, in new protections for vast swathes of land and sea, from Tibet and the Amazon, to the North Atlantic and the furthest reaches of the Southern Ocean. We wonder what focusing only on problems does to the human spirit. We're puzzled that crisis gets more coverage than healing, and that the headlines seem almost wilfully blind to victories for love and tolerance. We think hope isn't something you have or that you're given - it's something that you do.

How do we do this?

We send out one newsletter every week. Each edition contains 10-12 of our top stories of the week, with what we consider to be the most important social, environmental and scientific stories of progress from around the world. We also include links to some of our own original reporting. It's a quick, five minute read, a weekly dose of optimism that will make your inbox a better place.

You’ll find stories about the decline or elimination of diseases, medical breakthroughs, falling poverty rates, rising access to water, electricity and sanitation, human rights wins, conservation victories, protection of wildlife, the accelerating pace of clean energy and the decline of fossil fuels, and mind-blowing scientific breakthroughs that constitute real advances for our species.

In addition to our top stories of the week, paid subscribers get more content about social, environmental, energy and scientific progress. We visit some pretty obscure places in search of this stuff, so we also include our favourite links of the week: essays we've enjoyed, interesting tidbits of content or videos and music. Our premium edition is about a 12 minute read - a deeper, longer dive that will open your eyes to a bigger picture, restore your faith in humanity, and perhaps even make you fall back in love a little with the internet.

The real value of a premium membership is that a third of our subscription fees go to small, under-the-radar charities. These are the organisations that rarely make it into the media spotlight but are making a real difference at ground level. We feature the stories of our charity partners in the newsletter along with updates and details about how the money is used.

Who runs this thing?

My name is Angus Hervey. I'm a political economist by training, and I grew up in South Africa, before moving to the United Kingdom in my twenties, and then to Australia, where I currently live with my partner Samantha, and our three kids. I've been a news junkie for as long as I can remember, but about a decade ago I realised that the news was doing me more harm than good. As a researcher, I knew there were stories of progress happening in the world, and wondered why nobody was reporting on it.

After finishing my PhD at the London School of Economics, I moved to Melbourne Australia, where myself and my friend Tane Hunter started a think-tank called Future Crunch, dedicated to sharing stories of social and scientific progress. As part of that work, I started this newsletter, which eventually grew its own entity, known today as Fix The News.

Over the last decade I've spoken at over 500 events, including two appearances at TED, in 2023 and 2024, telling the story of how millions of people around the world are coming up with solutions to the big problems of our time. My real passion however, has always been in researching and writing about progress.

It's not just me these days. I'm assisted by Amy Rose, our creative director, who produces our podcast, helps me with the writing and editing, and stops my sillier ideas. We also have part-time editors and interns with educational and professional experience across the spectrum who all work on helping produce our content.

I started Fix The News because I believe another form of journalism is possible. Yes, journalists are supposed to hold truth to power and when terrible things happen we shouldn't turn away. But when we only hear stories of doom, we fail to see the stories of possibility. We deny ourselves the opportunity to do better. Fix The News exists to show that there's a better way.

What our subscribers say

A massive infusion of clarity and inspiration. It changed my life and still does every time I read it.
Braha Bender

I think it's the one newsletter everyone needs in their inbox and the only one I am happily paying for. It's filled to the brim with hope, and if there's one thing we need these days, it's hope.
Bess Klein

THE antidote to the bitter taste of mainstream news. Mainstream news shines a spotlight on the dog poo on the cracked sidewalk, while Fix The News casts a sunrise glow across the splendid architecture of the City.
Jim Wiggins

Reading Fix The News is like taking a mental health vitamin for anyone who is otherwise paying attention to the world and news.
Edith Buhs

A powerful antidote to the despair that is so often presented in the 24/7 media environment. The collation of stories from around the world of humans showing care and compassion, to people and the environment, as well as amazing technological and scientific breakthroughs unveils hope in our world.
Tim Kalmier

I love that I get an email that I WANT to read, I save it up for a time when I can relax with a coffee or glass of wine. Always so interesting, lots of little rabbit holes to go down and learn something new. I particularly like that it is positive and uplifting, the world can seem depressing with horrible events, wars, global warming etc, and I feel so helpless. Reading about people or organisations making huge changes for good in our world is so inspiring.
Annie Desantis

If your days are filled with repeat reminders of the evil and pain that humans can wreak on other humans, and you are tired of feeling depressed and disoriented by multiple sensationalized reports of lying, abuse and greed, you need a weekly dose of Fix The News. Let it motivate and inspire you to be part of the solution instead of being overwhelmed by the problem.
David Hunter

One of the most powerful newsletters I've ever come across for challenging my worldview and reminding me that there is no single narrative about the direction we're heading. When I read Fix The News, I'm reminded of Desiderata: "...the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism... And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
Kaila Colbin

There is no newsletter out there that compares. Each edition is full of news that you simply can’t easily find in mainstream media, with live links for more in-depth reads, but more than all that this newsletter has a soul.
Marian DeSimone

A fantastic synthesis of the hidden good news in the world that is hard for most people to find.
Tineke Fancourt

Hands-down my favorite source of news. My heart lifts each time I see a new issue pop into my inbox, because I know I'll learn fascinating new things and be inspired by examples of unexpected progress around the globe.
Amelia Hard

Whenever I sit down and read my Fix The News mail I know what’s coming …. A flood of hope, pride and all over feel good about who we are and where we are going.
Lyndsay Finney

A beacon of hope and inspiration – documenting technological breakthroughs, economic and political progress and the indomitable power of the human spirit.
Seth Bain

It’s the only email I always read in my inbox. It’s something I sit down with a cup of tea to read and then share the stories with all my friends and family. But it’s bigger than that, it’s also the idea that we can build the world we can imagine and we need to know what’s possible to do that.
Kena Duignan

The highlight of my electronic week. It's such a blessed relief from the cynical and relentless negativity of mainstream media coverage, without resorting to patronising kitten videos for some token "good news". It's solid, evidence based and a fantastic balance in my life.
Mark Stewart

What to expect

Comprehensive
We're committed to being the world's most wide-ranging source of stories of progress. Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for anyone interested in what's going right, not just in English-speaking countries, but everywhere.

Authoritative
In an age of disinformation and bias, it's really important to us that the stories we report are reputable and verifiable. We fact-check everything, and our evidence is gold-plated. This project lives and dies on the quality of our sources and our long term reputation.

Curated
Our job is to distill powerful stories of progress into a succinct snapshot that still connects you to the big picture. If we're doing it right, each summary will contain a clear explanation of what the progress is, the impact that it's made, and a timeline of how long it took, and what it took to get there.

Transparent
We're a small team, and we're human. Sometimes we get things wrong. When we do, we’ll call ourselves out and fix it in the following edition. Our readers do an excellent job at keeping us honest.

Inclusive
As part of our commitment to fixing the news, we offer free premium memberships to educators and mental health workers who find this resource useful. If this sounds like you, contact us!

Contact

If you are having a subscription issue or need customer service, write to us on our contact page - we always reply.

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Address
39-43 Plenty Road,
Preston, VIC, 3072
Australia