Data Driven News
A News Organization
The Vision
Providing news algorithmically prioritized according to how much it helps or hurts a citizen's, or group of citizens, ability to lead a healthy, productive life of personal actualization.
The chart above from the WHO, for example, tells us that stories on the health or damage to the cardiovascular system should be top priority stories for the health and well-bieng of all people.
The Mission
Reduce death, suffering, and misery by empowering people with information and an educational training network to allow people to practice the life skills and behaviors that will better their living experience in as many ways as possible.
The Look
I would definitely take cues from MappingPoliceViolence.org and DataDrivenJournalism.net as well as the NYT Upshot. The content would be very visual and data-rich while still telling a story and making a claim. However, the choice of what to make news would be based on that story's ability to actually empower the readership through information. Threats to people's lives would take priority. Threats to their safety and well-being would also be a high priority if the information could come with advice on how to protect oneself from such threats. Information about people's habits, behaviors, ways of thinking, that are helpful or problematic would be up there as well - aiming for a cultural shift toward self-improvement, and self-empowerment.
Story Ideas
Some stories that could have a repeating position in the news cycle would include the following:
Dietary research
Exercise research
Meditation/Prayer research
Guidance on healthcare
Local school news
Local criminal mischief if it is unsolved and people can protect themselves or help the police
Not stories in which fear, uncertainty, and doubt is sowed such as the stories of a single assault in which the perpetrator has already been caught.
Traffic and Weather, of course
Local and Regional political actions/events
Local, Regional, State, and National votes and actions that were taken by elected officials
Global/International issues
Global suicide, substance abuse, domestic abuse, human trafficking and other human stories with angles on how to spot it and report it locally
Global political decisions and their potential impact on the local community
It would actually be really interesting to have a section of going through other news outlet headlines and big stories of the day to contextualize how meaningless or slanted many of them are.
I put these on the list because they are all relatively cheap, easy, and meaningful changes people can make toward living a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life, as well as changes that can help to shape their world in ways that serve them, their family/friends, and communities. Sort of a like the second half of the whole think global/act local movement.
An online newspaper that reports on modern stories with data driven context and fact checking as the backbone of reporting.
As an example, the deaths in the US over opioids contextualized country by country with visual data comparing the problem in the US to the problem abroad or your local area to the problem in other areas of the States. Maybe contextualizing with visual data concerning issues with similar death tolls. And maybe contextualizing with respect to other substance abuse data. A very fact and data driven visual news outlet.
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