I started Good: this week in 2026, mostly because I was tired of the way the news made me feel. Not the news itself — a lot of what's happening in the world is genuinely bad, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone. But the experience of reading the news had turned into something negative, especially as I got older. I'd close the tab feeling worse than when I opened it, and nothing in my life had actually changed.

Good things were happening too, though. They just didn't travel. A village adopts a bunch of stray dogs and it trends for a day. A country quietly cuts its road deaths by 7% and nobody hears about it. A new cancer test gets approved and it's on page 14. The good news was out there, it just wasn't organized.

So this publication is an experiment in organizing it. One issue a week, every Sunday, built from stories I found during the previous seven days. I try to write about them the way I would tell a friend: specific, a little dry, honest about what's going wrong as well as what's going right.

I'm a wedding photographer in Asheville, North Carolina by day. This is a side project for now, but I intend to keep doing it for a long time.

If you have a good story to share, send it through the submission form or email me at hello@goodthisweek.news. I read every one.

Thanks for being here.

— Darrell