Wired: Irresponsible Jounalism at its Finest

Wired's Epicentre blog published a story today entitled "Angry Shareholders Want CNET Board Shakeup" in an attempt to say that CNET consists of a bunch of screw-ups, their shareholders are mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore! Well, that's the point author Betsy Schiffman was trying to make, even if it's not held up by the rest of the article. I'm a big fan of CNET, and I'll tell you that up front. So right off the bat I've avoided one of Shiffman's biggest mistakes by burying the full disclosure more than halfway down the page, probably hoping that you won't read that far.

The posting says that two holding companies which own large chunks of CNet stock (NYSE: CNET) are trying to make changes in the number of directors that would give them majority control.

Schiffman then goes on to say that the reason for this shakeup is that the stock "has gone nowhere but down" and that this is "CNET's real crime." Oh for crying out loud! Time for some debunking.

First, a falling stock price or a hostile takeover bid are not unusual. Such things are regular features of any capitalist economy. And in no way is a falling stock price a crime, please buy yourself a dictionary.

Shiffman's case for the falling stock price? By comparing the current price of a little over $8 to the all-time high of about $80 in 1999. That's right! Newsflash! Stock in most tech companies was worth way more before the bubble burst! Everyone in the technology sector lost when the bubble burst, even mighty Microsoft saw its stock price cut in half. And actually, CNET's share price has been more or less flat since mid 2006 after a slight but sustained upward trend. Its all on Google Finance, look it up.

While a stagnant stock price is not a good thing, and would often result in changes in upper management, it has very little bearing on us as individual consumers and has not adversely affected CNET's websites, which are its major holdings, to any noticeable degree, in fact they've done some pretty substantial upgrades over the last couple of years.

So calm yourselves, despite Schiffman's intimation that CNET is circling the drain and there is a mob of angry shareholders trying to grab what that can before the company sinks completely, there is no good argument to show that that is the case.

Oh, and Shiffman's belated full disclosure: "Wired News is a rival to CNET's News.com." Well, the bad news is that Schiffman can keep doing sloppy journalism because as far as I can see, Wired in a privately held company and has no share price to protect, nor shareholders to answer to, be they private citizens or faceless holding companies. But that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

/end rant/

Still with me? Great. Because now I have a public service announcement: would anybody in the Canadian Arctic who happens to see 2 600 reindeer wandering by please return them to Richards Island in the Northwest Territories. It seems that Canada's largest reindeer herd , which was established in 1935 as some sort of livestock experiment, has gone missing from the currently ice-bound island. The herd consists of about 3 000 animals, 400 of which have already been recovered by their keepers (who are so fired when this mess is over). The concerns here is are (a) how in the hell do you lose 3 000 animals each the size of a small horse (!) and (b) it seems that reindeer and caribou can interbreed, making the already fragile native caribou herds vulnerable to diseases commonly found in domestic reindeer.

Well, my job here is done, and now I will ride off into the sunset on my motorized bar stool.