TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs notes that the coverage earlier this week emanating from the Ford Motor Co. press conference where Bill Ford stepped down as CEO and was replaced by a Boeing executive was exactly the type of story that the world of business journalism often misplays.
“Moreover, the business media never under-functions so reliably as at a press conference. A good spread of free Danish pastries and coffee sometimes lays siege to the media’s better judgment. But the larger issue is that the default mode of thought for business journalists is on-one-hand-on-the-other. Speak to both sides, split the difference.
“But at many press conferences (see Time Warner/AOL, which produced some of the most misguided business coverage since The Business Press Maven was thumb-sucking his way through middle school), both sides are on the same team.
“And even when the press conference is not about a merger but an appointment, the business media falls for the new face and new storyline that all the practiced participants in the press conference are peddling. A good business journalist wants to speak to someone who digresses from the party line, and they have to be hunted down outside the press conference.
“By the look of the majority of coverage that followed Mulally’s appointment and the stock strength that followed it, not too many dissenters were walking the streets of Dearborn, Mich. The coverage was fawning — unencumbered, shall we say, by much critical thought. A Detroit Free Press columnist even led with Mulally’s admission that he drove a Lexus as evidence of a bracing honesty that would be a grand asset in turning Ford around. Uh, what was he going to say — he drove a Focus?”
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I have to disagree. The Detroit News coverage included plenty of skepticism.
A few key quotes:
"Ford and the Detroit auto industry have a history of expelling outsiders the way the human body expels foreign objects." - Daniel Howes, pg. 1.
"Despite Alan Mullaly's solid track record and sucessful turnaround at Boeing Co., Wall Street analysts say the newly appointed Ford Motor Co. chief will face obstacles unfamiliar to the aerospace industry as he enters the automotive industry's far more competitive landscape." - lede to sidebar on pg/ 4A by Josee Valcourt.
On the next page, Sharon Terlap and Louis Aguilar write about employee reaction. While the headline puts too positive a spin on the story, the actual article includes quotes like this from line worker Walter Johnson: "I don't know what to think. I don't know the man, I never heard of him, but I know a lot of these changes - I don't see any of them doing any good. Every move seems like it's meant to make the union weaker. Either we give or they threaten to move down South."
The main story may have been somewhat tepid, but the overall coverage was very good. Fair and balanced as they say at Fox.
And by the way, Mulally driving a Lexus IS a big deal. Maybe not in New York City, where Mr. Fuchs lives, but here in the Detroit area, where I was born and raised, it is huge.