Media Oversold the Retail Story

The Business Press Maven should not have to holler and wave his arms on a street corner concerning coverage of the monthly retail sales numbers, right? Well, after reading a few days of coverage ... clear that corner. I'm likely to hit you in the eye with an errant hand or yell in your ear.

Retail sales should be an easy item to report accurately on to investors. It's a pretty straightforward statistic. August retail sales appeared better than expected, the same way that July sales were a little lighter than expected. All in all? Probably pretty close to a wash. But little of what the business media wrote reflected this. Why?

The calendar was a bit screwy this year, with the enormous states of Texas and Florida starting school later than last year and many tax-free days also being rearranged. We just went through this in July, to explain the lighter-looking number. So when the prettier-than-expected August number comes out, what do we see?

The business media, those little gullibles, get all giggly and schoolgirl-ish.

"Retail Carries the Day," screamed Forbes in a headline late last week. The article began in similarly overheated fashion: "The big stories Thursday centered on retailers ringing up strong sales in August ..."

Lower down, Forbes mentions something that might not have been factored into the number, saying that this might render it a "false reading," so I felt a little better. But that something had nothing to do with the calendar shift -- the shift we just got done talking about in July.