Listeners must wait until summer, when the FCC is expected to bless the transaction, in order to discover what the new KDKO will sound like. But any station featuring contributions from Anschutz, Singleton and the indefatigable Daddio could turn out to be awfully interesting.
That does not compute: There exists a scary world that most of us who remain financially solvent know nothing about -- a spot in cyberspace where the last surviving day traders try to squeeze a little more juice out of high-tech companies. And interlopers to this place are seldom greeted with open arms.
Mark Poutenis
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David Milstead, a business reporter and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, learned this the hard way. On February 2, he wrote a piece suggesting that the prospects for Level 3, a local telecom, were worse than its executives were letting on -- an opinion that, on the surface, seemed to fall far short of controversial. But numerous visitors to stock message boards supported by the Yahoo! search engine reacted to his concerns with derision, and worse. As Milstead disclosed in "Hell Hath No Fury Like Defenders of Level 3," published March 2, postings included "Who is that idiot David Milstead" and "Denver hack job by lazy RMN writer."
Most unexpected of all was the missive by someone identified as dbledsoe13 (no doubt a reference to Drew Bledsoe, lame-duck quarterback for the New England Patriots), who purported to have checked Milstead's credentials. "First -- some background on Mr. Milstead," proclaimed the anonymous fellow. "He has written a grand total of 4 articles for the paper. The paper lists absolutely NO background information on him. Luckily I did my searching. In 1997 he was the Dayton editor of the Small Business News... Before that he was a student at Oberlin University (say what?), graduating in 1994 (plenty of experience in the business world, especially with recessionary markets). For those interested, Oberlin has no finance degree, no accounting degree, and barely a whisper of a business school (economics is their ONLY business major). This guy has stuff that I want to hear?"
When Milstead, who hooked up with the News in April, 2001, stumbled across this posting, he reacted in an unconventional way; instead of simply ignoring it, he answered back. Under the heading "David Milstead Sends His Love," he provided a basic resumé: He received a degree in economics from Oberlin College (it's not a university) and worked at Small Business News and a newspaper in South Carolina before being hired by the Wall Street Journal. "I was laid off from the Journal at the beginning of the recession," he wrote, "so if you feel my 1994 degree implies I don't know what a recession does to businesses, I respectfully disagree."
The reactions to this information by the Yahoo! crowd were thoroughly entertaining. Some were snotty ("David Milstead has been offered the position of Business Editor for Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine") or profane ("GFY," shorthand for "Go fuck yourself"). But many seemed overjoyed that a reporter for a major metropolitan daily cared enough about them to reply. Typical was this declaration: "I am AMAZED you were willing to post on this site."
Milstead doesn't regret having conducted his little experiment. "When people talk about my opinion, I don't mind that," he says. "But when somebody misrepresented me, I wanted to correct that. If, after hearing my actual background, they still think I'm an idiot, that's fine -- but they should know I was at the Wall Street Journal, too."
Likewise, he believes he's doing readers a service by being honest about high-tech stocks. "I don't share any responsibility for overhyping these companies. That's why now I'm walking on the battlefield and shooting the wounded."
