Why New Media Journos should stay away from Finance....

Just read John Battelle's Searchblog (it was on Techmeme) re Google stock drop, and the Dire Warnings Thus Forecast. Eh? Has he clocked that all stocks are tumbling globally? Did he bother to map Google against the NASDAQ? Or against Microsoft? For your edification, I have - see below. Guess what - Google's boat has risen and fallen with the tide - in fact it's gone a bit higher, so is doing better, and this is what stock markets do, after all.....



What gives here? There are 2 possible explanations, (i) The writer is posting on something he has little or no competence in (unlikely - its not hard to mark to market, after all), or (ii) that this is a deliberate attempt to spin and stretch facts to get a big traffic story onto Techmeme, and damn the accuracy. Thing is, even if it is the latter, I am left with the strong impression of the former.

What also bothers me is the "metastory" here - the increasing amounts of non-story stories that are hitting the Techmemes, Diggs etc now. Is winning the race for traffic only made possible by spinning ever more wildly, by becoming tabloid virtual media....I suppose, looking at the mainstream media that the answer is yes - sober reporting, the checking of facts etc is typically a minority reporting game.

(For the record, I'm no Google fanboi and avoid 'em wherever possible, but I am a fan of good reporting! )