Will Dow record receive same amount of coverage?

Chris Lester, the Kansas City Star’s assistant managing editor for business, wrote in Tuesday’s paper that some of his section’s readers are demanding equal coverage to a new record for the Dow Jones industrial average.

Lester wrote, “In the past few days, several devoted readers have called in a stir, fueled in part by the upcoming midterm elections and talk radio chatter. Each one demanded that we run a story and headline exactly the size as the one fixed in their memories the last time the Dow stood at such lofty heights.

“‘You’d do it if Clinton was still president,’ groused one reader.

“Now I’ll admit there were some pretty big headlines back in the days of irrational exuberance, just as there were throughout the subsequent tech and telecom crash. But I took the liberty of actually checking the stock market story we ran on Jan. 15, 2000. The story, written with a fairly ho-hum-just-another-record tone, appeared on Page 3 of the Business section.

“The lessons are rather simple. When it comes to financial markets, you never know you’ve been to the top until after you’ve rolled back down that hill. In life, it’s also more important to know what direction you’re going than where you’re standing.”

Read more here.