Making fun of business news

Jane Wells, a CNBC reporter based in Los Angeles, has a new blog on the CNBC web site called “Funny Business” that has as its goal to make fun of business news.

She wrote, “I’m looking for quotes from overly-handled-by-PR-people CEOs, badly written press releases, the ‘good marketing ideas gone bad,’ people with too much money but not enough ideas, and just plain stupid stuff with a business angle.”

I particularly like her critique of a press release. She wrote, “Finally, my favorite inscrutable press release so far this month comes from L-3 Communications. Here are the first two paragraphs of an honest-to-goodness release to the media that I think, THINK, says the company is being paid to provide software that lets a bunch of people fighting a war communicate with each other:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 15, 2007–L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL) announced today that its SYColeman subsidiary has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract from the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) to develop an advanced intelligent software technology for Future U.S. Army warfighting elements in a network-centric environment. The value of this science and technology development contract is potentially $43 million over 5 years.

To provide “space to foxhole” information sharing, SYColeman will engineer solutions for Vertical/horizontal Integration of Space Technologies and Applications (VISTA) intelligent software technology. VISTA will demonstrate the capability to distribute integrated space products and services in a seamless network capability, supporting all levels of Army Battle Command. This initiative will address corps and theater needs as well as the specific needs of individual tactical commanders at Brigade and below.

“Ok, got it. So you’re using Microsoft VISTA to fight a war, right? And I’m not sure what an ‘integrated space product’ is. Other than that, it’s perfectly clear.”