Maven: CEO Dearest

A renaissance? Well, at least there is no parallel made to Cleopatra.

Even Mulcahy, much to her credit, said that she was disappointed in the steep drop in margins. And about the only groovy thing you could take away from the quarter was that full-year numbers weren't immediately ratcheted down. But here was the second paragraph of the Journal article: "In May 2000, the company elevated to president Anne Mulcahy, an obscure human-relations head who joined Xerox in 1976 as a saleswoman." (Like Horatio Alger, only with better hair!)

"Today, Ms. Mulcahy is widely credited with managing one of the most adroit corporate turnarounds since Louis V. Gerstner Jr. rescued International Business Machines (IBM)" Holy overstatement!

Four decades after feminism, let The Business Press Maven put the landscape in perspective: If you are reading about a powerful businesswoman, make sure the coverage is not overly positive. And be doubly sure the woman is not being portrayed as Margaret Hamilton in a boardroom. If you ever find anything fair and middle-ground, treating a woman like just another possibly talented corporate hack, trying to make a strategy fly and a stock-price pop, do let me know.

And whether you are reading about women or men, always keep in mind that journalists have a theology that sometimes leads to confusion: For some reason, no one is quite sure precisely why, the person who writes the article cannot, under pain of death, talk to the person who writes the headline.

Sometimes this leads to confusion, as this recent dud from CBS MarketWatch proves.

Headline: "Index Crushed by Pricey Oil Costs."

Lead: "Retail stocks lost any sense of upward momentum in choppy trading Friday after June Crude contracts topped an eye-popping and unprecedented $75 a barrel and couldn't recover. The S&P was off marginally to 470.39 on the session ... "

Index crushed? Off marginally? That is one story that comes a long way, baby, between headline and lead.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints