US boy sets up website specializing in good news

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-08-18 14:40

BEIJING: A US boy has set up a video website that specializes in all good news in the world because he think today's news is too depressing, according to media reports Monday.

Max Jones, a 12-year-old schoolboy from Orlando, Florida, has already set up Weekend News Today at www.hnheadlines.com, for which he is the senior anchor. He also set a goal of presiding over a network of 15 sites in the future.

The website garners up to 5,000 hits a day and has attracted unpaid teen interns from across the globe to write and edit videos and written contents.

"I really think that one person can make a difference in the world, just bit by bit," Max Jones said.

Max Jones hit upon the idea when he watched a year-end retrospective on the Today show. He became hooked on journalism and turned his bedroom closet into a TV studio in December 2008.

"You get so many opportunities with being a journalist, and you get to see so many things that other people would not get to see. I just wanted to get out there now, and I like starting things before anybody else. I wanted to get ahead of the game."

He usually spends some five hours a week -- more in the summer to record his video segments at home and in a computer lab.

"This is a young kid who is out there to change the world, and he cares so much about the world, and he's so young," said Lillian Wu, who is 18 and writing for Weekend News Today. "It's just inspiring. So many older people just don't even care or are really indifferent, and he's out there making his voice be heard, and yet he's only 12."