>* On its face, this is shocking to me. I would have never, ever expected positive content to be more profitable than negative content! In hindsight, however, after thinking about it a bit, it kind of makes sense. I'm now wondering, could advertising perhaps become (gasp) a force for good, at least in certain settings?*

News are good when they are neither positive nor negative by design.

They are good when they are relevant, useful, and informative (including them not being cherry-picked examples of stories with no impact to their readership, e.g. about some sensational murder case 10.000 miles away, and so on).