Is Media Unspun useful to you? Then pass it on to a colleague. The more readers we have, the more successful we'll be. The more successful we are, the more useful we can be to you. Pass it on!

Media Unspun serves business news and analysis, authoritatively and irreverently, every business day. An annual subscription costs $50, less than a dollar a week. If your four-week free trial is coming to an end soon, please visit http://www.mediaunspun.com/subscribe.html and sign up via credit card or check.

We're deep into the quarterly earnings season. Intel's downbeat report on Tuesday cut short a Wall Street rally. Yesterday IBM and Apple announced near-flat quarters, and today Microsoft and Sun will unveil their figures.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal played good cop, bad cop with the Apple and IBM reports. The Times said Apple is "fighting off a deepening technology recession" and characterized its revenues as "essentially flat." The Journal stressed Apple's "swing to loss" after profitable quarters since early 2001, and described the company as "sinking back toward the technology slump that it escaped once before." The Times headlined that IBM's numbers "defy the slump in technology" while the Journal chose to emphasize the flat revenue and decline in net sales.

What the papers agreed on is that any signs of improving IT spending remain hard to discern. The Times did allow that IBM's CFO's "comfort" with analysts' fourth-quarter estimates might "suggest some year-end pickup in technology investment." That was as good as it got.

The Journal quoted an analyst's opinion on exactly why Apple's results were so unspectacular: PC users "remain in a perilously high state of satisfaction" and see no need to buy machines that "continue to bound farther and farther ahead of what the vast majority of buyers need." The Times noted the success of Apple's chain of retail stores and quoted CEO Steve Jobs crowing, "We've built a $400 million business from scratch in a year."

The Times took a look at Microsoft's new enterprise pricing program for Windows, Office, and other software, in which customers buy a subscription instead of deciding when, or whether, to upgrade. Steve Lohr reported on the squawks of some Microsoft customers at a move that analysts estimated might have added from $600 million to $1 billion to Microsoft's bottom line in the just-ended quarter. Unspoken in Lohr's reporting is the lesson that Microsoft offers to the likes of IBM and Apple on the best way to thrive in down times: milk a monopoly.

TheStreet.com, focused as it is on investors, perhaps tried harder than the general-purpose press to find good news in the earnings reports. Among the bright spots TheStreet.com turned up were RSA Security, which cut its losses and met analysts expectations, and Symantec, which blew by Wall Street's numbers. Another way to thrive when times are tough: sell to fear. -- Keith Dawson

Uncertainty in PC Industry Keeps Apple Earnings Flat
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/technology/17APPL.html

Results at I.B.M. Defy the Slump in Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/technology/17BLUE.html

Apple Swings to Loss, Predicts Sales Increase
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1034798485563901548,00.html
(Paid subscription required)

IBM's Net Declines 18% As Revenue Remains Flat
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB103435045393745956,00.html
(Paid subscription required)

Some Yelp as Microsoft Squeezes
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/technology/17SOFT.html

Competitors: MS Up to Old Tricks (AP)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,55835,00.html

RSA Security Cuts Its Loss, Meets Estimates
http://www.thestreet.com/tech/ronnaabramson/10048367.html

Symantec Blows Past Estimates Again
http://www.thestreet.com/tech/ronnaabramson/10048342.html

Apple posts net loss
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962325.html

No Signs of Recovery in Tech Earnings (LA Times)
http://tinyurl.com/21eq

What's worse than elbowing into a party where no one's interested in talking with you? George Bush doesn't seem to mind, but Ford Motor Co. CEO Bill Ford's audience is tougher than the U.N. Security Council. His plan to meet with analysts is in rehab after a disastrous Wednesday in which Ford's carefully crafted media strategy took a stompin'.

Ford began losing control of its message Tuesday night. That's when, according to USA Today, Ford exec James Padilla told the Automotive Press Association that Wall Street's negative spin on Ford was the fault of conflicted analysts looking to peddle consulting services. Exactly how might analysts earn fees from Ford's low-priced stock, which at $9 is barely enough to buy a container of Turtle Wax? Padilla, who heads North American manufacturing, sales, and marketing, demurred from an explanation. The newspaper reported he later attributed his comments to frustration at the scrutiny Ford's restructuring plan has been subject to.

Padilla no doubt wishes he had pulled the covers over his head when his alarm rang Wednesday morning. According to the Wall Street Journal, the third-quarter earnings announcement was hyped to be "a milestone" in CEO Bill Ford's "crusade to rebuild the battered company his great-grandfather founded 99 years ago." Cue the swelling score here: Ford numbers looked comparatively decent, and its $326 million net loss was narrower than expected. Penny-pinching by North American automotive operations had cut that unit's losses to $50 million from $849 million a year earlier. Profits from Ford's credit and Hertz car rental units lifted the company, too.

The return of a sentimental favorite to greatness? Not quite. By mid-afternoon, Standard & Poor's had rained on Ford's earnings parade. Instead of reporting on Ford's improving fortunes, journos were covering Ford in the context of S&P's announcement that it was placing the company on a credit watch. Worse, Ford was getting lumped into the same stories as rival General Motors, whose long-term credit rating S&P had downgraded.

Ford's misery may want no part of GM's company, but the New York Post reported that Wall Street analysts want none of Bill Ford's. The CEO was supposed to begin spreading the gospel of a revitalized Ford (the carmaker) this week, the Post reported. Now the trip has been postponed for a week so Ford & Co. can polish their act. But the tabloid's no-name sources say most financial types aren't interested in Master Ford and would rather meet with CFO Allan Gilmour or COO Nick Scheele. Ford isn't seen as a "serious chief executive." Hey, at least he's not an "indicted chief executive."- Deborah Asbrand

Ford Unit's Chief Blasts Street Negativity
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2002-10-15-ford_x.htm

Ford Beats Expectations
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/earnings/2002-10-16-ford_x.htm

Ford Tops 3Q Target, Warns On 4Q
http://money.cnn.com/2002/10/16/news/companies/ford/index.htm

S&P Cuts GM Rating
http://money.cnn.com/2002/10/16/news/companies/ford_gm/index.htm

Jaguar Losses Brake Ford's Revival Plan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,813118,00.html

Ford Lifts Figures But Pensions Gap Grows (Daily Telegraph)
http://tinyurl.com/21g5

Ford Has Quarterly Loss, Pension Liability Soars (Reuters)
http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2002/10/16/rtr753161.html

Ford Posts a Loss of $326 Million for Quarter (AP)
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ford17oct17,0,3864204.story

At Ford Motor, Revamp Means Rebuilding a Wrecked System
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1034706168165800756.djm,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

S&P downgrades hit General Motors, Ford (Financial Times)
http://tinyurl.com/21g6
(Paid subscription required.)

Is Ford Tough Enough?
http://www.nypost.com/business/59862.htm

Consumers Face Tricky Maze in Guarding Privacy
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/business/17PRIV.html

If I tell you that I'll have to kill you: Red Hat fights the DMCA
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/26656.html

New RedHat Kernel Patch Illegal to Explain to U.S. Users
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/16/1146212

Netflix faces day of reckoning
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/4303953.htm

Reuters' Future Looks Ugly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,813168,00.html

Icahn Says He Didn't Make ImClone's $30m Big Dump
http://www.nypost.com/business/59883.htm

The Dark Side Of Pfizer's Earnings
http://www.forbes.com/home/2002/10/16/1016pfe.html

Regulators Sue Deloitte & Touche
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/business/17INSU.html

Global Creditors May Go After Winnick's Money
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-global17oct17,0,5769434.story

AMR Posts Monster Loss
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/4303951.htm

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.
Subscribe already, willya? http://www.mediaunspun.com