On Friday afternoon, Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington sent a memo to her employees. The gist of the cloyingly adroit missive: Facebook’s proprietary news algorithm currently privileges “stories of people and communities doing amazing things,” so HuffPost needs to publish more of those stories. The global initiative will be called “What’s Working.”

A few other highlights and pronouncements:

  • “the era of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ is over”
  • “We want ... to start a positive contagion”
  • “You’ve heard of copycat crimes. We want ... to inspire copycat solutions”
  • “In Davos last week”

Full memo below:

From: Huffington, Arianna
To: ALLHP
Date: January 30, 2015, 2:38 PM

HuffPosters,

In Davos last week, we announced “What’s Working,” a global HuffPost editorial initiative to double down on our coverage of the positive stories and solutions to major challenges the media too often overlook. While we will continue to cover the stories of what's not working—political dysfunction, corruption, wrongdoing, etc.—as robustly as we always have, we want to show that the era of “if it bleeds, it leads” is over, and start a positive contagion by relentlessly telling the stories of people and communities doing amazing things, overcoming great odds, and facing real challenges with perseverance, creativity, and grace. As the #1 social publisher on Facebook, we’ve learned these are the stories our readers are most interested in reading and sharing. Greg Beyer, Lance Gould, and John Montorio will be leading this effort in the U.S., while Sebastian Matthes, HuffPost Germany’s editor-in-chief, will be bringing it to all our international editions from Athens to Seoul as our new global executive editor of “What’s Working.” You’ve heard of copycat crimes. We want “What's Working” to inspire copycat solutions, and we’d love you all to be part of it.

Arianna

Previously:

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · Top image: Huffington Post