Thursday, August 13, 2009

Priorities

Magnitude 6.5 Quake Jolts Japan, Unlikely to Affect Stocks*

Headline of a Wall Street Journal article on Google news. What a relief! The first thing people think about when an earthquake strikes is: "My god, I hope this doesn't affect the Nikkei!"


*Don't know if the link works as WSJ has not allowed any access to their site from any computer in my home---even through Google News---since I canceled my subscription 2 years ago.

4 comments:

  1. Actually that is all that the rest of the world cares about. Our Man knows the chaps and chapettes at Reuters' Tokyo franchise take it in turns to be on call for "the big one" - when the quake wipes out the market. C'mon, there are serious dollars at stake here.

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  2. At least someone will notice if we fall into the ocean.

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  3. Anonymous3:33 PM

    For the WSJ and other financial news organizations, the economic/financial aspect is probably the major part of how news is covered.


    Actually this story first appeared on DJ Newswires, which has an even more hardcore investor readership. Their initial reaction to news of this kind is - somewhat depressingly - likely to be 'what's the Nikkei doing?'. I suppose because that's what they are payed to do, and so that's what they pay to read from DJN.

    Also, the story was preceded by a couple of other headlines that said there has been no loss of life/damage from the quake.

    And, it was published well over an hour after the quake happened, just after Tokyo markets opened, so the focus had shifted somewhat.

    How do I know all this? Why do I even care? Well, I wrote the headline.

    Cheers!

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  4. Thanks for that.

    All I could see was your headline on google news, and it stood out in the other stories about the quake. Since it looked quite humorous out of context, I had to post it.

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