The newsroom axiom ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ might have worked for selling printed papers. But in a digital age where readerships are driven through sharing, there are some who doubt whether editors should still apply the bleed rule.

For instance, when Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany in this summer’s World Cup, Google Newsroom didn’t write a negative headline for its Brazilian readership.

Google’s Sam Clohesy said at the time:

We don’t want to rub salt into the wounds… a negative story about Brazil won’t necessarily get a lot of traction in social.

Elsewhere, it seems, constructive journalism – the practice of writing news that explains the news and suggests solutions to problems – is proving more popular than purely negative news that ‘bleeds’. As reported by Journalism.co.uk, the New York Times’ Fixes column often turns out to contain content that is shared most by email.

David Bornstein, a co-author of Fixes, explains:

Our sense from Fixes is that solutions journalism is actually something that people want, but it’s not because they want light, fluffy stuff or good news. They actually want information that helps them to understand the world and how to do better against these problems.

The potential lesson for content marketing in all of this is to create content that solves a specific problem – flagged with a straightforward headline, of course. If the trend suggested by Fixes is anything to go by, audiences share constructive content more than content that simply describes. It also dovetails with the view of search that suggests many people are looking to have questions answered when they type in requests to Google.

So if it bleeds, it doesn’t lead.

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