If you think the news is too depressing, a 12-year-old schoolboy from Orlando, Florida may just have the answer.

Between juggling homework, orchestra rehearsals and cello lessons Max Jones has set about building an online television empire that specializes in all that is good in the world, according to the AFP.

He has already set up Weekend News Today at www.hnheadlines.com, for which he is the senior anchor, but envisions one day presiding over a network of 15 sites.

Some might scoff at this ambition but his flagship project garners up to 5,000 hits a day and has attracted unpaid teen interns from across the globe to write and edit video and written content.

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

Max dreams of becoming a broadcast journalist and is certainly ahead of curve, believing newspapers will eventually give way to online media and wanting to be in front of that transition.

The dream started when he watched a year-end retrospective on the Today show and became hooked on journalism.

In December he turned his bedroom closet into a TV studio where he spends some five hours a week -- more in the summer -- writing opinion pieces, taping video segments, gathering contributors and forging partnerships with other sites that share his good news zeal.

"My bedtime is 9 o'clock," he insisted. "If I have too much school work I put this aside because school has to come first."

Recording his video segments at home and in a computer lab at Lake Highland Preparatory School, where he starts the seventh grade this year, Max already has the tenacity of a seasoned reporter.

Max had more success with the author of a book on North Korea who he had tracked down after Asian-American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were taken captive while reporting in North Korea.

He became very active in the cause to free them, and after they were released, he received a call from Ling herself thanking him for his help.