Taking Stock: Morning News Offers a Rerun
by February 7, 2000 12:00 am 47 views
We’re not sure how many people still get their stock quotes from newspapers.
But anyone who checked The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas on Jan. 29 for quotes on stocks or mutual funds got a completely inaccurate picture. That’s because, on Jan. 29, the News republished the results from Jan. 27, when the Dow fell just 4.97 points and Nasdaq dropped 30 points. Normally, newspapers publish the previous day’s closing prices. On Jan. 28, the Dow plunged 289 points and Nasdaq dropped 152 points, but you couldn’t tell that by reading the News the next day.
That means, for example, that shareholders in Fidelity’s popular Magellan mutual fund read in the Morning News that the fund’s net asset value climbed 5 cents. It actually dropped $3.50.
The paper apparently republished the same two pages it used Jan 27. It did manage to swap two ads on the pages, however.