Time Travels With Retail Reporters

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Did you hear the news? April same-store sales were as bad as they've been since stegosauruses were complaining about backaches. Also, JetBlue's (JBLU Quote - Cramer on JBLU - Stock Picks) founder got fired, canned, sent packing for a vacation in Unemployment City.

Do you sense a note of sarcasm with telltale undercurrents of pious outrage from The Business Press Maven?

Who can blame me, when many of the headlines on April's lame same-store sales and the JetBlue founder's career change are sort of right -- and at the same time totally wrong?

A Trip Back in Time

Take retail sales. Any way you slice it, they were baaaaaaad. (For effect, try pronouncing that like a sheep.) But precisely how bad is the question. Peruse headlines and leads, and images of dinosaurs skipping the mall for a bit of territorial battle come to mind.

"Retailers have weakest April on record," yelled Reuters, which put a fine point on it in the lead with some repetition: "Retailers reported the weakest April sales results on record Thursday," (hey, where have I heard that before?), "after cold, stormy weather and an earlier holiday sapped demand for spring merchandise."

The results were the worst since 1970, Reuters says.

You know how I feel about the weather excuse, but I will wind my way back to that holiday.

The Wall Street Journal told us in its lead that results were "dismal" and "among the worst on record," soon hitting upon 1970, too, when The Business Press Maven was analyzing the business media while chewing plastic toys.

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