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After four days of stock market improvement, the business media just couldn't hold it in any longer. Is the bear market over? Is it safe to invest again? Everyone asked, and everyone included that hallmark of the 21st century economy, the question mark. As business punctuation goes, it beats the multiple exclamation points of the '90s, but it's not much to base articles on.

Most journalists called a bunch of market wonks, who said -- film at 11 -- that either the rally was for keeps or it wasn't. (Go not to the analysts for counsel, for they will say both yes and no.) CBS MarketWatch revived a debate, started in early August, between a bear and a bull. The bull was more cautious than last time, but you can guess what was said -- such point-counterpoints are about as likely to reveal new angles as a debate between Planned Parenthood and the Pope. Business Week likewise provided no surprises with a column by Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for Standard & Poor's, whose position practically obliges him to say things are looking up. In the fourth quarter, said Stovall, even information technology should see earnings improvements "if we cross our fingers hard enough." Don't forget to throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder, too.

How are the bulls justifying their optimism that this isn't just another bear market rally like July's? For one, the market is thinking about how nice life might be next year instead of how much it sucks today, one brokerage president told MSNBC. (Similar fourth-quarter cheer "proved to be unfounded" last year, he added, but hope springs eternal). Investors might have been encouraged by a rumor that cult of personality Warren Buffett was buying stocks. Rather than selling anything that moved (or didn't) in June and July, investors are "separating the hostages from the culprits" and only selling stock that deserves it, one strategist told TheStreet.com. The biggest factor was that it's earnings season, and plenty of companies beat analyst forecasts. "Right, you were supposed to earn 72 cents, but last month you told the Street you would actually do 33 cents and today you report 34," said Fortune's Andy Serwer, "Hallelujah!" Oops, this was supposed to be the happy paragraph, wasn't it?

TheStreet.com, CNN, and the Dallas Morning News all said we'd get some clue of the rally's longevity on Wednesday. Intel missed its earnings expectations by two cents after the bell on Tuesday, and some worry that this bad news "could turn the new-born bull into a veal cutlet," as CNN put it. If investors don't freak out and punish the entire market for Intel's two pennies, the theory goes, then happy days are here again.

Or you could just stop trying to read the tea leaves. "Be careful about making long-term decisions based on short-term events," said CNN source and 401(k) expert Wayne Bogosian, "Five years from now no one will remember today." Boston Globe columnist Charles Jaffe noted that "huge sociopolitical concerns" like Iraq and terrorism "could make this market turn on a dime."

If you really need direction, the New York Times idly wondered about a correlation between an all-California World Series and the stock market. Both previous Northern California vs. Southern California baseball matchups came during bad economies and were followed by big Dow gains, so now that it's happening again, who knows? There is no "reason to think that anyone who takes such relationships seriously should be trusted with money to manage," stressed Times writer Floyd Norris. But is baseball really any worse a long-term indicator than Intel's 2 cents? - Jen Muehlbauer

Is It Safe To Get Back In?
http://money.cnn.com/2002/10/15/pf/investing/q_safeyet/index.htm

Will Intel Break The Bull's Back?
http://money.cnn.com/2002/10/15/markets/intelreaction/index.htm

Dow Back Over 8,000, But Investors Don't Know If Rally Has Legs (Dallas Morning News)
http://tinyurl.com/20n4

Does The Market Have Staying Power?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/821506.asp

Is This Rally in for the Long Haul?
http://www.thestreet.com/markets/aarontaskfree/10048022.html

Bull vs. Bear Rematch
http://tinyurl.com/20n3

Finally, a Rally with Substance? (Business Week)
http://tinyurl.com/20n5

About That Rally: Don't Get Giddy
http://tinyurl.com/20n2

The Rally Continues
http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209914

A Good World Series for California, and Maybe for Wall Street
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/business/16PLAC.html

AOL better hope its readers don't read the news much. Because if it weren't for the company's media ploy of announcing a reduction in pop-up ads, its estimated $100 million rollout of AOL 8.0 would have had no press coverage at all. If it weren't for the bad press, that is.

The only context in which the media saw AOL 8.0 was its contest against Microsoft's MSN, in which Redmond came out smelling like a rose as a come-from-behind contender. AOL no doubt hoped CEO Jon Miller's announcement that the company will no longer sell third-party pop-up advertising on its service would garner it some positive press clips. Hey, it'll cost us $30 million in advertising revenue, went AOL's message, but our users are worth it. Miller was quoted as saying that the reduction would offer "a better member experience," a comment that sounded vaguely pornographic to Unspun. AOL had good reason to be cheerful: Now the only ads it'll be popping up will be for AOL Time Warner services.

AOL better hope Miller can take a media punch. The Wall Street Journal kicked off AOL's media week with a page-one look at the Microsoft vs. AOL contest. That same day, the New York Times fronted its business section with an examination of AOL Time Warner's reluctance to fess up to investors and the media on the dire straits of its finances. But news of the semi-banishment of pop-up ads only got as far as front of the Journal's Marketplace section. The Times relegated it to page C8 -- smack next to a column that called AOL-TW exec Jamie Kellner, who's CEO of Turner Broadcasting, "the least well received speaker" at a national advertising conference.

The Washington Post gave the news better placement -- a slot on the front biz page -- but AOL probably wishes it hadn't. The so-called reduction in pop-up ads masks what's really going on, according to Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy: a strategic shift toward using such ads to hawk AOL's products and services, rather than as paid advertising vehicles. Yesterday's Post coverage said that in the AOL-Microsoft's contest, AOL is not only outspent and facing a federal probe into its accounting, it's also enduring "a toxic blend of ill will and skepticism" because of its floundering merger with Time Warner. A toxic blend? - Deborah Asbrand

How AOL's Sunny Forecasts Outshined the Gloomy Facts
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/business/media/14AOL.html

In Internet Access, AOL Feels Microsoft's Evergrowing Reach
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1034558638102362636.djm,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

AOL Says It Will Phase Out Pop-Ups
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32134-2002Oct15.html

AOL Hopes New Software Will Slow MSN Threat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25379-2002Oct14.html

AOL Says It Will Eliminate Some of Its Pop-Up Ads
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/technology/16AOL.html

Sitting Ducks for Hard and Soft Sells
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/business/media/16ADCO.html

New AOL 8.0 smacks down pop-ups
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962068.html

America Online Joins Rivals In Putting Down Pop-Up Ads
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1034703839166302636.djm,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

AOL Updates Software, Curbs 'Pop-Up' Ads (Bloomberg)
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-popup16oct16,0,3590636.story

Partial Guilty Plea Entered by Ex-ImClone CEO Waksal
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1032128755347

Andersen, or What's Left, To Learn Its Penalty Today
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1618838

Sun Seen Set to Lay off up to 8,000 Employees (Boston Globe)
http://tinyurl.com/20mz

Rolling Stone's Attitude a Miss at McDonald's
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0210160149oct16.column

Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jimduffy86@yahoo.com).

Advertising: Erik Vanderkolk (erikvanderkolk@yahoo.com).

Editor and publisher: Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com).

Media Unspun is produced by The Vineyard Group Inc.
Copyright 2002 Media Unspun, Inc., and The Vineyard Group, Inc.
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