Holiday Sales up 3.6%; Good News? Not If You are the New York Times.

The recession we’re not in has struck, according to the NY Times. First, this Christmas season was supposed to be worse for retailers than the last. It was also supposed to be the year that on-line sales were supposed to hit a brick wall.

First the facts among the opinion:

Spending between Thanksgiving and Christmas rose … 3.6 percent over last year…online spending rose 22.4 percent

So how do you make records sales for both brick and mortar as well as virtual retailers look bad? Well, that’s why they pay the writers and editors for the NY Times the big bucks.

Begin with the headline:

Disappointing Sales During Holiday Season

Follow with an editorial comment telling the reader how to interpret the data:

American consumers, uneasy about the economy and unimpressed by the merchandise in stores, delivered the bleak holiday shopping season retailers had expected, if not feared, according to one early but influential projection.

Then make comparisons to years in which spending rose more:

By comparison, sales grew 6.6 percent in 2006, and 8 percent in 2005.

But read the whole “newsitorial” yourself and see why Micheal Barbaro works for the NY Times…and why the entire Times can be purchased by the petty cash in most people’s change cups.

And who is Barbaro? Here is a sample of his other holiday headlines:

Holiday Spending Is Weak, as Retailers Expected
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Disappointing Sales During Holiday Season
By MICHAEL BARBARO

How the Cooling Economy Is Stealing Target’s Christmas
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Retailers Face an Ominous Holiday Sign
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Never Mind What’s in Them, Bags Are the Fashion
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Some Gains, but Stores Are Worried
By MICHAEL BARBARO and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Meteorologists Shape Fashion Trends
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Sears Profit Plunges; Cost Cuts Get Blame
By MICHAEL BARBARO


Retail Sales Rise, but Stores Relied on Discounts
By MICHAEL BARBARO; KATIE ZEZIMA CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM BOSTON.

Bargains Draw Crowds, but the Thrill Is Gone
By MICHAEL BARBARO

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds takes note:

CHRISTMAS RETAIL SALES UP, BUT BY A MODEST 3.6% -- but online sales were up 22.4%. The New York Times calls those numbers "bleak," a term that's more accurately used in reference to its stock prices . . . .

Reader, and hedge-fund manager, George Zachar emails:


Investors now have to gauge not only the reality of economic data, but its predictable willful misrepresentation by the press. We therefore have to speculate not only on underlying conditions, but on the effectiveness of the effort to scupper Main Street confidence.

And more from Glenn Reynolds and Ed Morressey:

ED MORRISSEY WONDERS WHY THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT RETAIL SALES is being ignored:

Retailers expected a boost between 4-5% on "Black Friday". They got
almost twice that, as shoppers flooded the malls on the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional kickoff of the Christmas shopping season. Consumers shrugged off the credit crunch and the rhetoric of the doom-and-gloom Democrats, who promise that poverty lurks just around the corner.

One might think that this would make headlines -- but despite the
AP's report, few of its clients appear to have selected it for the Sunday
papers.

Hmm. This sounds familiar. Where have I heard something like it before? Oh, yes, right here:

I have found over the years that there is often a huge disconnect between belief about the economy and the true economic state of affairs. Until the statistics are actually published, people tend to assess the economy through the eyes of the national media. In 1992, when Bill Clinton won the presidency based on worries about the economy, the statistics that came out after the election showed that the period leading up to November had actually been a period of record growth. . . . In his 1996 State of the Union speech, President Clinton said we had the best economy in thirty years -- a statement that sent a flurry of reporters to check actual statistics rather than popular political
movements and sweeping, politically motivated statements. The more people looked at the facts, the more they agreed, and six months later, there was near-unanimity that the economy was in good shape. Had the economy changed? No, what had changed was knowledge about the true facts of the economy.

Hmm.
Wildly incorrect ideas about the state of the economy in 1992. A focus on facts
that showed the good economic news in 1996. What could account for that change?
And why does it seem to have worn off in the 2008 season?