Maven: Amazed by Amazon

Watch how Amazon does this in the release in question. The first three bullet points are, debatably, meaningful. The company shipped orders on time, to more than 200 countries, etc. But by the fourth bullet point, it was already trying to distract journalists who -- look at the Associated Press story and beyond -- obliged.

Consider Amazon's fourth bullet point: "One of Amazon.com's most remote shipments was Mission Impossible - The Complete First Season (1966) shipped to Wainwright, Alaska." The Associated Press played stenographer, also passing along the information that Amazon's customers "order enough orange-flavored Airborne cold-fighting supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747 planes." Gee whiz, you don't say. But the AP's writers didn't think for themselves and tell us all those things we wanted and needed to know about what mattered here.

Professional stock-pickers were talking about the spread between reality and what came over the wire after the Amazon release in the form of rewritten Amazon releases. The Motley Fool touched on it. But many more should have.

The Business Press Maven has long taken the business media to task for hoping the holiday season's one last chance to be a blowout is just around the corner. This year, a new last chance has been born, and it actually extends beyond Christmas. Because gift cards have become a more substantial portion of holiday sales and can't be booked until they're redeemed, hopeful headlines (and not completely illegitimate ones) abound, such as The Washington Post's "Retailers Try to Extend Shipping Past Holidays: Discounts, Promotions Aimed at Gift Card Recipients," and Reuters' "Gift cards, cold give stores one last chance."