The Maven: Lowdown on Layoffs

Look Out for No. 1

The Business Press Maven spent the better part of the past two weeks talking about the automobile industry and how the business media were making a big mistake in using the No. 1 ranking as a legitimate measuring stick for the automobile industry. The quest for No. 1 causes so many mistakes: giving away cars, a la General Motors (GM Quote), for example, just to keep the ranking, which carries no prize money. So what does Forbes do just to spite The Business Press Maven?

It gives its old-line auto writer free rein to talk about what a blow it will be to GM to lose its ranking. "The Pain of Second Place" is the name of the article, and I use that term loosely. I won't dignify such outdated idiocy with another word.

Get to the Source

Finally, what would happen if some French newsletter you've never heard of published an unsourced story on a potential merger? If you were a modern news outlet like Reuters, you'd pick up that deflated ball of a story and run with it, writing in a passive voice that the deal was "thought to have been signed last week." Check out the lead:

PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) -- Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. could announce a friendly merger deal within the next few weeks to create the world's biggest drugs company, according to a report on Monday.

In an unsourced story, French financial newsletter La Lettre de l'Expansion said a pre-merger deal was thought to have been signed last week.

For all I know, it could have been. But one newsletter plus no sources does not equal a story, in The Business Press Maven's divine book. Beware.