The Optimist Citizen · 2014–2022

India's first newspaper for good news.

For eight years we reported the stories the rest of the press walked past. This is the record of what we made, and where to find all of it.

Read the stories →Browse the editions

10M+

Digital readers

25,000+

Print readers

2,500+

Stories

Editions

31+

Cities

Years

What it was

A small rebellion against the front page.

The Optimist Citizen began in 2014, started by a handful of nineteen-year-olds in Bhopal who were tired of opening the paper to nothing but bad news. The premise was simple, and a little defiant: report the good with the same rigour the rest of the press reserved for the bad.

Not fluff, but solution-led journalism. Inventors, educators, unsung heroes, and the quiet acts of courage that rarely make a headline. It grew into India's first purely positive newspaper, in print and digital.

Over eight years: fifty-plus editions, two and a half thousand stories, readers across 31 cities and four countries.

The final edition went to press in 2022. What follows is the work itself, kept where anyone can still find it.

The Stories

2,500+ good-news stories.

Our archive, searchable and filterable by year, every story free to read.

Enter the stories →

The Editions

Every print edition, archived.

The complete run of the newspaper, free to read as PDFs.

Browse the editions →

Impact

What it meant to readers.

The paper reached classrooms, homes and offices across the country. Here is what some of them wrote back.

"I had stopped reading newspapers years ago because they only spoke of everything that was wrong. This gives me a lot of hope. I think it's critical to our sustenance."

Arpita Singh · Reader, Hyderabad

"My child read it cover to cover and looked up and said: there is a lot of good in the world. I can't tell you how much that meant."

Sangitha K · Reader, Bengaluru

"Just when I was done with mainstream papers, The Optimist Citizen became an oasis, letting me look at the brighter side of humanity."

Archana Zulifiqar · Reader, Bhopal

Beyond the Newspaper