Investors immune to negative business writing

Hal Morris, writing Monday on his Grumpy Editor blog, notes that investors seem to be immune to the negative slant of many business news stories.

Morris writes, “The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 106.41 points on Thursday and tacked on an additional 217.52 points on Friday — for a total gain of 323.93 points, reaching 8,280.59 — as financial writers were banging away with lines such as:

• The recession shows no signs of abating.
• Data released Thursday underscored the reluctance of individuals and businesses alike to spend in the face of a gloomy economy.
• Anxious consumers, whose spending fuels the nation’s economy, have cut out all but the essentials.

“The above phrases are from Ylan Q. Mui and Howard Schneider writing in Friday’s Washington Post while compressing the latest statistics on retail sales, factory orders and jobless claims.

“But the week’s prize for working in negative phrases goes to Associated Press writer Jeannine Aversa who, in a lead, puts the growing jobless blame, not on the heavy outsourcing to foreign countries of jobs — ranging from newspaper copy editing to furniture manufacturing — and steep financial damage stemming from subprime loans, but by ‘a vicious cycle of cutbacks by consumers’ that ‘forced ever more layoffs by beleaguered employers.'”

Read more here.