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My conversations this week with drought-crushed farmers in rural New South Wales, along with our wildly ambitious magazine story on the decade when the world could have stopped climate change but didn’t, got me thinking about the emotions around news and what it often lacks: a little joy and wonder.

Are things getting better or worse? Does the news media focus too much on the latter?

These were the questions running through a thoughtful piece in The New Yorker this week, and I could see a similar struggle in local coverage of the latest results from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which showed both positive and negative developments on wages, income and work.

I even saw tributaries of related inquiry in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s stellar profile of Gwyneth Paltrow in The New York Times Magazine.