Conclusion: Assessing news performance

At the outset, we asked if there is any good news about the news and, if so, where the good news is. In academic research and public discussions about news and democracy, one fi nds different interpretations of the state of current news provision. A tendency towards pessimism about current news performance is commonplace. Although there is an overall proliferation of both traditional and newer forms of online news availability and supply (Esser, de Vreese et al. 2012), many suggest that the performance of news providers is getting worse. In more or less explicit terms, the decreasing quality of news is seen as having a negative impact on the quality of political life and democracy. Set against the pessimism and caution in the public debate and literature on news quality and the performance of political journalism, we were not optimistic that we would fi nd good-quality news or that we would be able to offer some good news as a positive antidote, so to speak, to the pervasive pessimism in the literature.