Yahoo!'s Earnings a Mixed Bag

This much we know for certain: Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) reported its fourth quarter after the close yesterday. And it was the first report under new CEO Carol Bartz. And it was a Tuesday. And Barak Obama is president.

What is less certain, at least from a scan of the headlines, is whether this fourth-quarter report was surprisingly great or a total misery.

CNBC is in the first camp: "a Yahoo Posts Higher Profit, Outstrips Forecasts."

The Wall Street Journal's "All Things Digital" blog was another happy little camper. It went with an Obama-influenced headline -- "Liveblogging the Yahoo Fourth-Quarter Earnings Call: Yes, We Can" -- and managed to call the results "a nice, tiny surprise" in the lead.

Now for the dark turn. Remember: same earnings, totally different headlines. Turnaround might be fair play, but not in competing headlines on the same numbers.

Check this out from the Associated Press: "After 4Q loss, Yahoo sees rough 1Q under new CEO: With no quick fixes on horizon, Yahoo's new CEO braces investors for more trouble ahead."

The Wall Street Journal, in a departure from the blog post mentioned above, chimed in as another charter member of the rainy-day club in its headline: "Yahoo Posts Loss as New Chief Plots Strategy." The article's lead included the words "loss," "warned," "bleak," "hurt" and "intensifying the pressure." And that was only in the first sentence. Ouch.

So what's up, you ask? Or, perhaps, what's down?

Simply this: The business media suffers from a bad case of the absolutes. It is often bouncing between extremes. A story, especially a short, earnings story, has to have a thread, a string of thought to make it more than just a bunch of words on a page. And it's easier to write something with a story line that is clear and simple. Good or bad. Black or white. Hero or villain. Nuance is too complicated a balancing act.