Maven: Ford Idling

We've all been waiting on the edge of our collective seat for the first bumptious, exciting and far-reaching strategic move from Alan Mulally, the airplane man who was appointed CEO of Ford (F) amid a business media pant-and-squeal attack.

And the move is?

He created a post. That's right, folks, a post, a product of his sweeping "flatter management" approach. Holy '90s flashback, Batman.

That sound you hear echoing from Michigan to Wall Street is expectations falling with a clank.

Personally, I wouldn't have had time to create a post because I'd have been in some garage in Dearborn, Mich., personally trying to screw together a successful subcompact, but perhaps Alan Mulally is just being prudent. In his first major move, Mulally said that Jon Parker, the head of Ford Asia Pacific and Africa, and Mazda, will report directly to Mulally instead of going a roundabout way.

If this first move was the assertion of the sort of visionary leadership that is going to save the nation's second-largest automaker, then The Business Press Maven wears his sundress with combat boots.

But to put things in larger perspective, maybe when press conference expectations are so out of whack, we can't help ending up like this, all forlorn and in a puddle of tears. At the mention of another wedding-day press conference, let's back up, careful not to run over anyone. Aw, heck, let's just throw the car into reverse and gun it.

When Bill Ford downgraded himself to second fiddle in early September, he appointed a CEO in his stead who might very well have been his last choice, a guy who had spent a career at Boeing (BA) peddling planes, named Alan Mulally.

As I said at the time: I had nothing against Mulally. In fact, the only evidence I have that Mulally has bad judgment was the fact that he took this job. But -- and here's where the business media lapsed as usual -- Ford and Mulally held a press conference.

There's an old trading adage: Sell at the wedding and buy at the wake. Truer words were never spoken. But if you look at the history of the news, nothing seems to get written about more gently than weddings, even though half end in divorce and much of the other half hold a lifetime of recrimination and regret.

The gentle coverage of weddings in newspaper Lifestyle sections carries over to the business pages, where press conferences about mergers, joint agreements or new appointments receive much the same treatment.

The coverage of the Ford-Mulally wedding was light and comedic, like something that could appear in a Lifestyle section, with so much prominent mention made of how Bill Ford was going to key Alan Mulally's Lexus that The Business Press Maven suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. The Maven is flashing back in sweaty anguish to the moment Time Warner's (TWX) Jerry Levin and AOL's Steve Case held their little love-fest of a press conference, and coverage centered upon the ridiculous joke about the fact that Levin took off his tie.

Of course, investors in that one eventually came to want to hang themselves with their own ties. But such is too often the fallout from such mergers.

Can Mulally resuscitate Ford? Can anyone? The Business Press Maven does not think so, but even there I'll reserve judgment. As I said before: Outside of one particular career move, I think well of Mulally.

But at the very least, let's look at the time frame. No matter how excited the coverage of one of these announcements is, effecting any change takes a long, long time -- if it can ever be done. Chasing such positive coverage almost always leads you to moments like this, when you realize, once more, the error of the business media's ways.

While no one is bum-rushing Ford, asking to take it over -- and I don't think anyone ever will -- the market is (outside of Ford) in an "if it moves, merge with it" mode. This brings up an interesting question for the business media: how to cover deal chatter, those unsubstantiated rumors that move stocks. I suggest calling it deal chatter in the headline and stating in the first sentence that the rumors are unsubstantiated. The Business Press Maven calls your rapt attention to an article that ran Thursday afternoon on our own TheStreet.com, which did just that.

That story is about American Express (AXP) rumors that pushed the stock up 3%, but could run their course faster than expectations that Mulally will be an instant fix for Ford. More important than what the article says about American Express is what The Business Press Maven beseeches you to take with you: Read stories on rumored takeovers carefully, making sure you have a sense of whether the talk is just chatter and how substantiated it all is.

It's getting a little crazy out there. And that, my friends, is something I can always substantiate.