How to Fix Business Media

Why? Well, reading what the business media put out daily had all the charm of a forced march. I could not understand how so many could be so wrong so often on the very same issues.

Gross domestic product and other government statistics habitually revised would be written about as if they never would be. GDP would be reported at, say, 4.2%. Big hunks of nonsense would be run about the significance of that number, even though it wasn't bound to survive. Sure enough, the revision would come out at, say, 3%, and the business media would do a military about-face to tell the public anew what the economy was like, not mentioning their fast-abandoned first series of ironclad conclusions.

Sometimes it looked like the business media's credo was to snuggle with anyone on a lucky roll. I don't know how many times I saw CEOs canonized in print because their companies had benefited from a good cyclical run, one on which a laboratory monkey could capitalize.

When luck ran its course and the CEO was thrown out, the demise would be covered, but with no larger understanding of what made a good executive vs. what made a bad or charmed one.

As an investor seeking guidance, the business media seemed to have the directional sense of a salad spinner. I vowed to put myself in a position where I could kick the business media in the shins.