Media Miss Google Angle in Reporting on New Yahoo! CEO

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- In a surprise turn, Yahoo! (YHOO) hired yet another CEO.

Marissa Mayer will be one of the few female chiefs of a technology company, joining IBM's (IBM) Virginia Marie Rometty and Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) Meg Whitman.

Mayer is accomplished, young and pregnant, and has a software engineering background, a rarity indeed. All in all, it's a good story.

But the media is largely ignoring or downplaying another side of the story: the ongoing exodus from Google (GOOG).

In an article called "A Yahoo Search Calls Up a Chief From Google," The New York Times -- like most others -- made no mention of the Google exodus. The Wall Street Journal mentions this "latest departure from Google," in passing toward the bottom of its article, which is better than nothing.

The Washington Post, conversely, highlighted it. In "New Yahoo CEO is latest top Google executive to leave search company," the Post focused an entire article from top to bottom on the issue.

Look: This is nothing that will fell Google in the short run. There is even the possibility that Google, which has a lot of talent, might survive a long time without being affected.

But anytime a company faces a lasting outflow of high-level employees, it's something to watch. With all the focus on Yahoo!'s intriguing new CEO, though, the continuation of the exodus story at Google has hardly been noticed.

At the time of publication, Fuchs had no positions in any of the stocks mentioned in this column.

Marek Fuchs was a stockbroker for Shearson Lehman Brothers and a money manager before becoming a journalist who wrote The New York Times' "County Lines" column for six years. He also did back-up beat coverage of The New York Knicks for the paper's Sports section for two seasons and covered other professional and collegiate sports. He has contributed frequently to many of the Times' other sections, including National, Metro, Escapes, Style, Real Estate, Arts & Leisure, Travel, Money & Business, Circuits and the Op-Ed Page.

For his "Business Press Maven" column on how business and finance are covered by the media, Fuchs was named best business journalist critic in the nation by the Talking Biz website at The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Fuchs is a frequent speaker on the business media, in venues ranging from National Public Radio to the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

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