HiTrev........This from Stockwatch is an excellent explanation of their news service and how it evolved .......
Thank you for your comments. We are working on some changes to our system that will address your concerns, but these changes will take some time, so bear with us.
In the meantime, let me explain the background of Stockwatch in case you are recent Internet arrivals to our news service. We started our news service in 1984, with hard copy publications that were printed daily, weekly and quarterly. A couple of years later we introduced an electronic news feed for the professional market, ie brokers. All those services with the exception of the quarterly still exist. For the most part, the subscribers to those services want to see the news for all companies. Our goal has always been to provide the news from all companies, but in order to do this and keep readers, neither Stockwatch nor any other service can afford to fill its 'publication' with non-news or repeat news. To the best of my knowledge, no publication or news service in the world would attempt such an editorial policy.
At this point perhaps I should add: don't confuse a news service with a word-fee service. Word-fee services, such as ISDN, Canadian Corporate News, PR Newswire, Bisiness News and Canada Newswire, are services that carry only what they are paid to carry. Because they charge the newsmaker by the word, typically $1.50 per word, their policy can be summed up as "the more words the merrier." The only information you will ever find on word-fee services is information the service's corporate clients want you to find there. Stockwatch's service, on the other hand, was started as a free service to public companies listed on the Vancovuer Stock Exchange -- I was a broker and felt such a service was needed -- so we charged the recipient of the news, as do all news services. One of the reasons for this was that the small, often broke companies listed on the VSE could not afford to pay a word fee, whereas the brokers (our chief users then) could. As well, I did not want to run a completely good-news news service whose news content was dictated by the directors of VSE-listed companies. As any news organization, from the largest to the smallest, will tell you, people won't buy it. Eventually the purveyor of such puffery will go the way of his product, and if you have traded penny stocks for some time, you know that direction. I might add that over the years there has been considerable pressure from a few company touts and their loaded-up brokers to print all the good news -- as it is defined, of course, by the touts, their brokers and in some cases their lawyers. Two recent examples of this sort of pressure are YBM Magnex ( Jacob Bogatin and the Russian mafia) and Summex/Farallon. In the latter's case, both companies are upset because of what we do/don't print about/by the other. And we ought to be reported to regulators for it, or sued for it, or both.
And now comes the Internet and an army of individual investors, such as Allen C. and Hank, who do not want any words, especially those they view as good ones, removed under any circumstances . In other words, they ask that Stockwatch print everything. Although they do not say so, I think they want to be the judges of whether or not an item is relevant, irrelevant, news worthy or rubbish. I find no fault with that. In fact, if I was researching a story about YBM's affairs or Farallon's affairs I too might want to see every word the company had issued. I would also want to see the words that everyone else, from short sellers to analysts to muckracking journalists had written. Gradually, Stockwatch's service is expanding to include many other sources of information, for the benefit of Allen C., Hank and other investors. Still, all these perfectly reasonable requests take time, and one of the things we have not yet fully dealt with is non-news, or at least non-news, in the opinion of this editor. Some of the problems we have not yet solved are appointment notices of new employees -- the specific complaint of Hank and Allen C. We always include the appointment of directors, but if a small company does not hold the new person in sufficent esteem to make him/her a director, then our current view is to reflect that in our coverage. Similarly, we will usually exclude the hiring of a new adviser or consultant. Usually, such professional people are available for hire by anyone with sufficient money to pay their fees. I refer to lawyers, accountants, engineers, advertising agencies, etc. And then there is the problem of the bone-lazy company that wants to disclose a legal agreement or a geologist's mineral report. Because they know we usually print news releases in their entirety, the game is to type N-E-W-S R-E-L-E-A-S-E on the top of the report and tell us we must print it all seven of the numbing pages verbatim. Apparently, Allen C. agrees with this principle if not this example, for he says: "I feel if Stockwatch puts out a release, it should be the same as the original from the company. Nothing should be left out. " So, you see the problem. Allen C. and Hank want nothing left out, a - la word-fee service, but the company faces no word-fee charges to encourage brevity and conciseness. Worse, a stream of jargon, legalese and gushes of pleasure about minor events eventually drives away paying readers.
So what to do if you are Stockwatch? For years, actually at the request of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, we have offered companies the option of using us as a word-fee service if they wish. The fee is $0.40 per word, an enormous saving over other word-fee services, but enough to cover our costs. Companies rarely use this option, but it is always available. This way, if the company is convinced its news is absolutely vital, it can always be assured we will print it. I will be the first to acknowledge that often a company has to print "news" for reasons other than news value. For example, in the case of a new employee, it may wish to simply 'stroke' the new employee with a stream of his previous accomplishements, including where he went to school and his excellent marks upon graduation. More often, an executive wants his expressions of pleasure regarding the news in the previous paragraph recorded for the benefit of the joint-venture partner. Sometimes a company's phone men have been building up investor expectations about results from 'the property.' When the results appear, they are nothing but chip samples, which most publications do not even summarize. We summarize them, but we balk at printing each and every one of them. The phone guys can have some trouble portraying a brief summary as the huge news they had been promising, whereas a couple of pages of minutiae can appear impressive.
In any event, Hank and Allen C., those are some of the business hurdles we have to deal with before we can give you 100 per cent satisfaction. Be assured though, with the rise of the Internet and an increasing number of individual investors on our service who want the same as you, we will come up with a solution for you. Until then, please bear with us. |
