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The Cover Story, Done Right

Marek Fuchs

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"Is Google(GOOG Quote - Cramer on GOOG - Stock Picks) Too Powerful?"

The words jumped out at me from the cover of the current Business Week, and not because The Business Press Maven thinks Google definitely is.

I just think magazine cover stories have a weird way of being, well, too powerful. As in: Way.

The media -- and not just the business media -- has this well-documented (or totally coincidental -- take your pick, I soon will) knack for calling someone's high point, their peak in the public eye, if inadvertently.

It's called the Time or Newsweek jinx -- or the Time/Newsweek curse in the case of Howard Dean, whose presidential campaign tumbled into shouted oblivion not so long after he prematurely appeared simultaneously on both covers, a newly anointed presidential force. But one magazine cover's force is the next magazine cover's farce. Take the Chicago Cubs, for example, because perhaps the most famous curse around is the Sports Illustrated jinx. The moment a player or team appears on the cover declared as powerful or a potential champion -- well, faster than you can say Steve Bartman -- they're toast.

Why does this seem to happen? The Business Press Maven, who remembers a Carly Fiorina cover story in Business Week that started with a lead about her "silver tongue" and "iron will," and ran soon before Hewlett-Packard's(HPQ Quote - Cramer on HPQ - Stock Picks) business started tanking, sees it as more than coincidence. As in: Way.

After all, to pump sales, magazines generally have to go with widely recognized concepts and images. But what is widely recognized in the most recent past (good for magazine people) is not necessarily what will be widely recognized in the near future (good for investors). But going too far out into the future (good for investors) gets a little conceptual and risky (bad for magazine people).

And in terms of being publicly recognized on splashy covers, well, maybe people who read their own press (which Carly and Howard were famous for) get a little overconfident.

Pride, you see, has this weird little way of going before a fall.

All of this is highly unscientific, of course, but so is investing.

Interestingly enough, Business Week seems to be anticipating the crime they only appear to be committing.

Business Week does utter those famous last words for a magazine subject -- the claim that Google has "come to represent all our hopes, dreams and fears..." (And here I thought The Business Press Maven did that.)

But to their credit, Business Week makes it clear in the sub-headline that tougher times might be coming: "As the Web giant tears through media, software, and telecom, rivals fear its growing influence. Now they're fighting back."

Which is the point, of course.

Everyone guns for a popularly declared winner, that competitor who, unlike you, is being powdered for their magazine pin-up.

And our economic system -- even more than our baseball or political system -- allows for such gunning.

Read the story, it's pretty good.

After opening with a Twilight Zone-influenced take on Google's ultimate power and framing the company's current market value as more than Viacom(VIA Quote - Cramer on VIA - Stock Picks), Time Warner(TWX Quote - Cramer on TWX - Stock Picks), CBS, Publicis(PUB Quote - Cramer on PUB - Stock Picks), The New York Times(NYT Quote - Cramer on NYT - Stock Picks) -- everyone but a player to be named later -- the article gets to the point, a quite sharp one, in fact.

In short, everyone is fighting back. But Business Week is fair. They don't get into the knee jerk assumption that customers automatically hate a big business. Because while journalists often do, the same is not true of most customers, the only ones who matter to a business in the long-run. For skirting this common transgression, Business Week gets The Business Press Maven's coveted "Nod of Approval" award. There is little evidence, they note, that users give three hoots about Google's power. Where there is evidence, they add, it is the product of sour grapes or corporate politics.

All in all, a good job by Business Week fighting against the cover story prototype they only appear to be following.

But a word to the wise: If you own Google, realize that this is still a Powerful Moment Cover Story. Contact a local jinx master to have them lift the curse as a precaution.

Speaking of magazine covers, for all of you out there who read Vanity Fair (the grand total should be somewhere between two and four), you might have noticed that it's been thick with ads lately?

Notice anything else?

Good. Because neither should any sane-minded soul.

Which brings us to Brandweek and The Business Press Maven's dreaded "Back of the Hand" award.

Brandweek actually took up magazine space this week to run a story called "Vanity Fair Ad Pages Predict Stock Slumps." I guess it was a slightly wry take on a study they do refer to, with what I suppose is a nod and a wink, as "highly scientific." But I don't want to hear even lame jokes about concepts when there are only three samples given and when -- most importantly -- drops of several hundred points on a base of thousands are taken as the definition of a crash. That, alone, makes me want to crash.