What were they trying to say?

Mark Anderson of the Ottawa Citizen rails Wednesday against news releases from companies that are indecipherable, even to business journalists who know the jargon.

Anderson writes, “The other day I received the following press release:

“‘Bridgewater Systems (TSX:BWC) today announced a wholesale solution for WIMAX service providers who wish to leverage their investment in 4G infrastructure with a comprehensive wholesale offering to MVNO and other third-party operators. With this Bridgewater solution, WiMAX service providers can enable third-party operators to offer branded services over their WiMAX network, while managing the complexity of subscriber management functions such as authentication, authorization and accounting on their behalf.’

“Huh? Say again? Bridgewater’s gotta be joking. Surely the PR/communications flacks responsible for this particular ‘news announcement’ understand they might as well have written the thing in Greek. Generalist business writers and editors have no idea what a 4G infrastructure is, let alone MVNO. Come to think of it, while we encounter many, many ‘wholesale solutions,’ and ‘comprehensive wholesale offerings,’ we don’t know what they are either.

“Finally, and critically, we don’t know what the news in Bridgewater’s news announcement is, or whether the news, if there is any, will affect the company’s health and prospects in any meaningful way.”

Read more here.