Globe and Mail reads blogs

As a shareholder and meaningful revenue driver, I notice stories about Starbucks. And given our recent experience with Bloomberg, I also notice when the big time press write about stuff that we yak about here as well. Reminds me that we might stumble across the odd item of mass interest from time to time (we don’t charge, nor do we force you to look at ads, however).

This past weekend, for example, the Globe & Mail’s Karen von Hahn tackled a February 14, 2007 memo written by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz.

If you track the Wall Street Journal, you’d have read about this memo on February 24th. Our blog talked about it on February 26th. Read Ms. von Hahn’s March 10th piece, and she would have you believe that the Valentine’s Day memo caused a sensation “last week”, although it was blogged about as early as Feb 23rd.

Last week? Huh? Then there’s the “unique” research.

This from the WSJ article on Feb. 24th:

“The concern comes as Starbucks faces intensified competition from McDonald’s Corp., which has upgraded its coffee….”

And from the Globe piece on March 10th:

“Clearly Schultz and his ilk had better wake up and smell the coffee — particularly now that he finds himself in the company of McDonald’s, which has just introduced its own premium brand.”

This column really begs the question: if you could have read about the Starbucks memo in an online Starbucks gossip site on Feb. 23rd, or in the WSJ on Feb. 24th, or in our minor blog on Feb. 26th, why does the local dead tree media treat it like new news on March 10th?

Are we living in a tree house in Algonquin Park without internet access or satellite hookups?? If you can’t provide timely commentary, why bother? Newspapers moved from afternoon delivery to early mornings in the early 80’s in an effort to stay current. Then they started to build an online presence in the 90’s. Now they are filing all the time in the hopes to beat the 24 hour TV news crowd, and avoid being scooped by someone else if they hold a story for the morning paper. But this piece seems to be a bit of a throwback.

One more example of why niche blogs are here to stay (such as the Starbucks portal), as the Sun Micro/SEC piece tomorrow will demonstrate.

MRM