Coverage of Yahoo's recent earnings report was a travesty. Not because they weren't able to meet some unrealistic Wall Street expectation. Not because they mysteriously met the Street's expectations within a tenth of a penny per share, which seems to happen waay too often (for many companies...oh wait, I forgot that analysts are just that good).
At this point you're probably wondering what in the world could possibly irk you about Yahoo's earnings, a noteworthy survivor of the dot-com era but hardly a name whose earnings perk much interest and anticipation. Well it wasn't so much the earnings announcement itself as the way the earnings were reported - i.e. a report card of Marissa Meyer. I've got nothing against the woman, and in fact admire her courage in joining Google before it was Google instead of taking the more typical route of investment banking, consulting, etc. However, it's sad when all reporters did was highlight how "well" she is doing to make her mark at Yahoo and in establishing her mark as a leader in Silicon Valley.
Whatever happened to reporting how well the damn company is doing, employee culture, how well the company might be responding to the leadership changes, and God forbid, what kind of value Yahoo has been bringing to users as each quarter passes? The first sad trend in media coverage of earnings was the media's (and Wall Street's) never ending quest for monotonic, linear to exponential growth in earnings. A new trend in the media seems to be reducing the health of a company to how well executives are doing for themselves in establishing their legacies. Steve Jobs' influence at Apple may be a large reason for that, but he's an outlier. There's no reason to peg the success of most multi billion-dollar companies on a leader, though they undoubtedly play a role. Larry Page is not Google, and Reed Hastings is not Netfilx (at least not anymore). The broader community of thought leaders and technical gurus are what drive these companies, in addition to the board and even investors.
Before you think it's just the financial media that reflects this trend, let's step back and look at how elections are covered these days. Based on the nature of the coverage in the past couple of presidential elections, apparently all we care about is who is leading at what point, how they'll gain points in the polls, and how they'll win political battles. NO, dumbasses, we care about outcomes, i.e. how our new leader will impact our lives. This obvious priority has obviously been totally swept under the rug, instead having us bust out the popcorn for the playoffs that are political elections. Is this type of dumbed-down distraction of the real issues pertinent to our lives indicative of the fact that stations are basically just looking for ratings, or a sign that there's just no objectivity and independent thinking in the media any more?? Or is it something else?
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