Categories: OLD Media Moves

Cutting the price is good news, right?

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs rips the business press to shreds for taking Apple’s word that cutting the price of the iPhone by $200 was actually a good thing.

Fuchs wrote, “Check out how much of the business media simply played dutiful stenographer to Jobs. It’s a crying shame.

“To CNBC, it was a “bold move,” while Forbes actually wrote that investors, who reacted (unlike the business media) with bitter disappointment to the surprise price cut but had pushed the stock up ahead of the top secret announcement, were buying on the rumor but selling on the news.

“Uh, there was no rumor of a notably gruesome price cut. That would not have made the stock fly in the days before what was billed as a ‘special event.’ True, a tweak of the iPod line was announced, but it looks much like the iPhone, and that prompts me to ask: Will the unique look of the iPhone, a major selling point, be lost?

“Investor’s Business Daily highlights the thoughts — and I use that term lightly — of an analyst who essentially says: This was the plan all along, to take an ax to the price by a factor of a third. Uh, dude, if it was the plan all along, they sure didn’t account for the rebellion of the loyal Apple customers who waited in line for the higher-priced iPhone weeks back. Jobs had to rush out an apology and store credit to those suckers.”

Read more here.

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.

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