Innumeracy — the numerical version of illiteracy — hurts.  It hurts more because unscrupulous parties use it to paint a convincing picture that is at odds with reality. Discourse, opposition, and needed change can all be suppressed by preying on innumeracy.  To see this in action, consider the case of Walmart back in the spring of

When Amazon released its top 20 contenders for its vaunted second headquarters this morning, I quickly scanned the list — not for my city, Philadelphia — but for Detroit. I was sad Detroit didn’t make the cut.  It was a bad day for them and a bad day for the country, I thought. It made me

With earnings season here once again, and the term fake news ricocheting across social and traditional media, it’s not too great a leap to get to the concept of fake earnings. Lots of companies present earnings that aren’t really earnings.  For example, in January Intel reported earnings of $10.3 billion, and then adjusted earnings of $13.2 billion, about

For companies trying to develop relationships with the media, here’s another arrow for your quiver:  Share the stories they write with your social media networks.  This according to journalists and reporters themselves.  When asked in the 2017 State of the Media Report by public relations software firm Cision, ‘How can communications professionals improve their media relationships and

It seems almost every reporter, anchor, radio host or ‘influencer’ out there likes to point out they are giving you information that ‘the mainstream media won’t report on.” Sometimes it’s information the mainstream media “wouldn’t dare report on.” I would offer that if you are trying to interpret the media landscape today, remove the notion

I kind of like seeing the CEO of Wells Fargo on the hot seat in front of the house and senate for the fraudulent opening of customer accounts.  I always felt Wells Fargo’s conduct in general and their attitude toward their customers was criminal. I just didn’t know how accurate my sentiments were.  Don’t get me wrong. The

Back in 1991, when I was freelancing, casting central newsman Bob Flaherty, then of Equities magazine and now head of his own financial news service, told me to get on a train to New York, visit the offices of something called Instinet and write a story about it. Instinet, owned by Reuters at the time,

My friend, entrepreneur Marc Kramer has started about 20 businesses.  Some have succeeded, others have not.  Among his start-ups,  I asked him if he got signals early on that he had a clunker on his hands, and if so, what the signs were. Generally, he said, he knew within about 120 days whether or not the