Categories: OLD Media Moves

Media can't understand NYT results

TheStreet.com’s Marek Fuchs is disappointed Wednesday that the business media covering the revenue uptick at The New York Times can’t seem to understand that the reason it happened was due to an extra week and a product coming out earlier.

Fuchs wrote, “Forbes, which mercifully managed to mention the extra week and product, was possibly, in the end, as bad as those that didn’t. That’s because Forbes spoke about the ‘glimmers of hope’ in the monthly numbers despite the caveats. Uh, an extra holiday week on the base of four ain’t really as simple as a ‘caveat,’ and it does seem to outweigh any glimmer, no?

“After the close, CBS MarketWatch ran another story, this one making a motion toward the appropriate measure of caution with this headline: ‘Gannett, N.Y. Times see more classified woes.’

“But still no mention of the extra holiday week.

“So it has come to this: a press release more open and honest about basic issues than the business media reports that follow. No wonder my head is so bent in sorrow that it keeps banging against my desk.”

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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.