“Let a smile be your umbrella … a smile will always pay.” That is from a tune that became very popular through a 1957 recording by singer Bing Crosby.

By custom and habit, this writer regularly — though not always — devotes a column relatively early in the new year to positive and encouraging economic, political, social and other trends in our world.

That becomes increasingly necessary, as well as more educational, as the years go by. Our television and radio media more and more focus on catastrophes of various kinds: geophysical, meteorological and human.

This does not mean our world is becoming more dangerous, difficult or disaster-prone. Rather, radical transformation is overturning established media and many other areas of our lives, driven significantly by technology.

Holman Jenkins, contrarian columnist for “The Wall Street Journal,” writes regularly with great insight on media hysteria. This constant fear reflects not objective reality but rather the........

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