A former advertising man has chosen a spectacular way to encourage Danish journalists to focus on good news.

He has gone to the drastic step of mortgaging his flat in order to pay for a supplement in this week's Journalisten, the trade journal for Danish journalists, where he asks Danish hacks to write a positive story every time they write a negative one.

Jan Thygesen Poulsen told Journalisten.dk he took out a mortgage on his flat so he could pay £13,000 to produce, print and distribute a 12-page supplement entitled "Journalism with heart" to the 13,500 members of the Danish Journalist Union.

"I have done this because I hope to create the kind of world I want to live in. And if it succeeds, I will fulfill my dream: to meet people heart to heart," he writes on his website, adding that he was tired of negativism and a pessimistic view of life.

Thygesen Poulsen has a long track record of working to spread his gospel of joy. In 1999 he started the Laughter club (Latterklubben) and a year after he instituted the Global day of laughter (7 May).

Now me, I'm telling you all this in order to compensate for my very negative post yesterday, when everything was just doom and gloom (nothing worked: the 'crucial' things in life, such as online connection, trains, money, weather – all conspired against me).

Having said that, I don't throw tantrums, and very rarely loose my temper (I'm more of a "if looks or words could kill" kind of person"), which means I'm now looking forward to penning the scathing termination note I'll write to my current online provider when I'm finally able to switch to my new provider. Adriana links to an interesting video on this kind of metamorphis here