Categories: OLD Media Moves

Coming to terms with different ways to interpret retail sales data

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs tries to come to terms Friday with how the business media could have said so many different things about the same May retail sales numbers.

Fuchs wrote, “Both Investor’s Business Daily and The Wall Street Journal sally forth with weather metaphors in their headlines that say totally opposite things.

“Said Investor’s Business Daily: ‘Retailers See Sales Spring Back In May As Most Beat Views.’

“Said The Wall Street Journal: ‘Retail Sales Fail to Disperse Clouds.’

“And you wonder why, when he reads the business media, it is always raining in The Business Press Maven’s soul. Put the two leads beside each other. Then read them and weep.

“Investor’s Business Daily: ‘After a bleak April, retailers posted stronger-than-expected May sales, with most beating views, as pent-up demand from the season’s slow start drove shoppers to purchase summer goods.”

“The Wall Street Journal: ‘The nation’s retailers reported modest sales increases for May, but a persistent slowdown in consumer spending could threaten their results in the crucial fall and holiday season.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.