With Wal-Mart the story is overseas

TheStreet.com media critic Marek Fuchs writes Wednesday that some media — Barron’s, BusinessWeek and the New York Post — missed the story behind Wal-Mart’s strong earnings, while The Wall Street Journal got it right.

Fuchs wrote, “Wal-Mart reported its fourth quarter Tuesday and much of the business media saw fit to lead with a number of different factors. Some led with the sexy thought that Wal-Mart became the first retailer to report $100 billion in quarterly sales. Others led with chat of performance vs. expectations, the effects of discounting at Wal-Mart or the wider impact of stateside consumer spending.

“But it’s as if the business media, too often complacent, was literally plugging their ears to the new story at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has run overseas and one takeaway of yesterday’s report was that it’s working quite well, thank you.

“Let’s take a quick look at one business media outlet that captured Wal-Mart’s accomplishment in this regard with a perfectly appropriate emphasis. We’ll look at another that at least bothers to mention it. Then we’ll let loose on a couple of media outlets that don’t even mention the word ‘international.’

“From Gary McWilliams at The Wall Street Journal, we get a pitch-perfect headline that centers upon the word ‘Global.’ The lead, God bless it, rightly credits Wal-Mart’s international sales as making up for a host of other troubles.”

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