Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 3:07 PM by Gene

HOW TO REPORT A PRESS AGENT'S NEWS: ZONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN emits a press release for his empire. An hour and a half later, voila! A PRESS RELEASE from FORBES.COM -- and a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO GREG! Then ZONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN rushes over to his star and pays him and his agent their stock options, conducting business through a megaphone (and the snobs at The Wall Street Journals) -- and a half hour later -- VOILA! Somebody copies it down and it's on Street.com! A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO SCOTT! These guys are so big on happy endings no wonder they laid an egg in West Virginia.

We quote from Marek Fuchs's primer on how to write a sat radio story:

[T]hose reporting on Stern's move kept both feet planted firmly in the air. Dutifully, they split the difference -- obscuring the truth.

Inevitably, the stories first open with an anecdote -- making reference to a drunk dwarf or some such. Then, it's off to on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand land....

After going on in this vein, the reports invariably end with an anecdote from a Howard fan, most often drunk and standing in the freeze outside of his final terrestrial show. Some were planning to sign up for satellite. Yet some were not.

Such overly balanced coverage requires no frontal lobe thought and gives the issue an automatic equivalence: they both stand a chance and one will emerge successful....

Business is not always a zero-sum game, with a winner and corresponding loser. The only thing that runs that simple are story lines.

KEEP WRITIN' THEM STORY LINES!