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To: Sonny McWilliams who wrote (24368)	9/14/1999 2:02:00 AM
From: Brian Malloy	Respond to of 27012

Someone elses take on the Barron's article. I give credit to Jack Rothstein and his money management crew that sent out this email on Monday. A news story from Bloomberg today says AOL's subscription growth (up 900,000 subscribers to around 20 million) and earnings (13 cents a share) will come in on target for the fiscal quarter according to Chief Financial Officer Michael Kelly. So why did AOL close 6 points lower this afternoon at 90? It wasn't just because NASDAQ was down 42 points. Something else figured, the prominence of one of AOL's detractors. Many members of the financial media are fixated not on businesses as businesses but on who's saying what about what stock. Rather high schoolish, don't you think? Notice how fond CNBC is of phrases like "Was spoken of"? It's a classical case of hierarchy--in this case, hierarchies of Wall Street analysts and journalists rather than the hierarchy in the school cafeteria--prevailing over intellect and common sense.The Big Man on Campus in this case is Alan Abelson, the Luddite of a Barron's columist who attacked AOL over the weekend. BMOC Abelson has been venting against Net stocks for years, relies heavily on short sellers for his information (no corruption charged here--but imagine the killing that his trader friends are making in the market right now by betting against your interests), and it would be remarkable if he did not errupt from time to time. Like many he hates what he cannot understand. He zeros in on the P in P/E but not on the growth of the E because he is too obtuse to grasp the factors that can expand the E. Investors who've listened to Abelson have lost out on untold millions because of his perennial bearishness toward the techs. That other media people take Abelson seriously is a solid indication of the cluelessness of many in the financial press. Perhaps CNBC itself should get off the hook because Dow Jones and the network are in a formal partnership, and CNBC is now more or less the video PR arm of Barron's. But it's inexcusable for press reports elsewhere to make vague references to, say, "fears over AOL," and then not put Luddite source in perspective.