The mayhem in the media industry continues. The Wall Street Journal, a News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS) property, is closing its Boston bureau and sending nine employees into the wind. The newswire and MarketWatch operations are going to stay open in Boston, however, with no headcount impact.

The Journal doesn't have any plans to close other offices, according to a memo by managing editor Robert Thomson: "there are no plans, nascent or otherwise, to close any other U.S. or international bureau." The WSJ will still support an "investigative function" in Boston, but the New York-based Money and Investing team will cover Boston's mutual fund industry, which boasts such heavy hitters as Fidelity.

At the same time, magazine company Time Inc., owned by Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) is looking to cut $100 million in expenses, and layoffs will undoubtedly figure into the equation. The company that owns Time, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated – and falls under the same umbrella as AOL, which owns BloggingStocks – is feeling the squeeze of a media recession that's even worse than the regular recession we've all been battling for what feels like decades.

The past two weeks we have seen oil prices steadily trade higher, but the sellers came out today in reaction to rising concern over consumer confidence and pushed prices lower.

Oil dropped under $67 a barrel today as Wall Street learned that consumer confidence had dropped for the second straight month in July. A major reason for low consumer confidence can be attributed to rapidly rising unemployment in the country.

In a perfect world, an ample supply of a commodity at a low price should stimulate demand. Not so with gasoline in America. According to MarketWatch, "Even though prices at the pump are now about 45% lower than they were a year ago and significantly below $2 a gallon, 52% of Americans told Gallup that they have not gone back to their old gas-guzzling ways."

The poll indicates, as might be expected, that lower income drivers are cutting back the most.

The easy reasoning behind the drop in driving is that people will save money in a tough economy. If things were good, drivers would drive more and take advantage of falling prices.

It may not be that simple. The average American is not a boob. He understands that, over time, the amount of oil in the world is finite. Gas prices may not go back up tomorrow, but they will go back up. Getting used to using oil-based products less is good long-term thinking.

Another, less obvious, reason for cutting back on hours on the road is that a car driven less lasts longer. Buying gas may be getting less expensive, but a new car is still an investment of over $20,000 in most cases. People don't have that money. Getting another year of service out of an aging vehicle has a particularly important value in a recession.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

On May 1st, financial journalism will be losing one of its best voices.

In a post on his blog this morning, Herb Greenberg wrote that "I'm leaving MarketWatch, Dow Jones and traditional journalism to start an independent research firm with my friend, Debbie Meritz, an analyst/accountant who has been a very good source of ideas in the past."

In addition to being an all-around great guy, Herb is one of the best scambusters in the business, calling shenanigans at companies like Krispy Kreme (NYSE: KKD) and Novastar Financial long before analysts or the SEC had caught a whiff of anything.

He's also demonstrated tremendous bravery, continuing to write about Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), even after libelous comments by its CEO/village idiot Patrick Byrne referring to him as a "crooked reporter."

Herb will be leaving MarketWatch May 1st, and there may be some downtime before his research firm begins alerting investors to hype and exaggeration. So if you're a crooked CEO looking to dupe investors, you might have a narrow window of opportunity before Greenberg is back on the case.

Mark Hulbert at MarketWatch wrote about influential investment newsletter editor, Richard Band's outlandish forecast that the Dow Jones Industrial Average may end the year at 16,000. This very bullish estimate of a 33% gain in the index from someone who's not typically a headline-grabber made Hulbert take note.

Hulbert, who tracks performance of some of the best newsletters in the business, has been tracking Band's Profitable Investing newsletter since 1991. In that time period, Band returned a 8.6% annualized return compared to an almost 11% annualized return in the Wilshire 5000.

Not bad but not outstanding. So why is Band all bulled up?

Technical factors have Band singing a very upbeat tune. The first, according to the article "has to do with the stock market's internal characteristics when it hit a low earlier this month. Band argues that that low possessed "many striking technical resemblances to the great bear market bottoms of the past.""

So, how does Band recommend playing the markets at this important juncture. He recommends a couple of market ETFs. Specifically, Band points to the iShares Russell 1000 Growth Fund (NYSE: IWF), the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (NYSE: EEM). Another recommendation is in a fund I've never seen before (but maybe I should): the Selected American Shares (SLASX). This fund, a 4-star fund according to Morningstar, invests in US large caps and has returned an annualized return over the past 5 years of almost 13%.

Zack Miller is the managing editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund.

"Never give a sucker an even break. Never wise up a chump"--W.C. Fields

People will scratch their heads for weeks trying to figure out why the Dow turned around about 600 points today and ended up 300. It is the kind of day folks can can tell their grandchildren about.

Part of the big jump in the Dow was due to the big run in financial components of the index, especially Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), American Express Company (NYSE: AXP), and JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM).

The rise was based on "what the Fed did yesterday and prospects for next week," said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak in an interview with MarketWatch. That is really no explanation at all. The market is not blind to what the Fed did or what it is likely to do. But no one had a better explanation.

Less than three months ago, the Dow was over 14,000. Today it dropped as low as 11,645. Traders saw some bargains in depressed shares and rushed to get a piece of them. There is no guarantee that many of those people will not take profits a day from now or a week from now. There has been no fundamental change in the dynamics of the market or the economy. No one will know if the Fed move has worked until a few months from now. The stimulus package that the President and Congress are working on could still fall apart.

Any rally now is based in part on a belief that the economy will not fall apart like a cheap watch. That way of thinking would be a mistake. If the next two months are riddled with higher-than-expected home foreclosures or some despot manages to interrupt the oil supply from a big exporter of crude, the market could sell off 5% or 10% again.

The tooth fairy may still exist, but her pockets are empty.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

It didn't work out so well when Michael Jordan tried it.

But it appears that CEOs coming in out of retirement to retake control of companies is actually a good thing for companies and investors.

According to a recent study of encore performances of corporate CEOs, led by Rudi Fahlenbrach, an assistant finance professor at Ohio State University, the stocks of companies run by CEOs who've come back in from the bullpen outperform the market by 6% annually during their reign.

So, as Herb Greenberg at MarketWatch posits, this could bode well for investors in Dell Computer (NASDAQ: DELL) and Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) -- both companies that have brought back CEOs to help lead their companies.

Quoting Greenberg: "According to Fahlenbrach, from 1995 through 2004 at least 75 CEOs at the country's 1,500 largest companies were called back to active duty from either retirement (especially if they still have a large financial stake in the company) or having been relegated to the chairman's outpost. "One of the most significant predictors of someone coming back is poor stock-market performance of the current CEO."

If this works for well for CEOs, do you think we can do it for the president of the United States of America? Where's Reagan these days...

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund.

Sometimes corporate competition can get pretty silly and downright petty, and this would appear to be one of those instances. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) rolled out its new Fox Business Network yesterday [subscription required], a few months after the company won its bid to acquire Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ), the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch.

And now, for the corporate espionage. CNBC somehow got Dow Jones to sign a contract allowing the cable business news network to buy all the advertising on Marketwatch.com on Monday, October 15th -- the day that News Corp., the soon to be parent company of Marketwatch, was set to launch its new business network.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The advertising contract was signed Sept. 11, 2007, and included specific provisions for Oct. 15, the Fox Business Network launch date, according to a copy of the contract reviewed by the Journal. On that date, CNBC agreed to spend $59,500 to buy all of the ad space on Dow Jones's MarketWatch.com site, and agreed to an additional $27,500 to make sure any visitor to MarketWatch's home page would first see an advertisement from CNBC. This is known in ad parlance as a "roadblock."

Then Dow Jones pulled the CNBC ads yesterday, in an apparent attempt to suck-up to Mr. Murdoch -- it's hard to understand why else it would have done that.

All of this interesting and somewhat amusing. The one thing Dow Jones can probably take from it is that it should do a better job reviewing contracts. Shouldn't CNBC's request for October 15th have raised some alarms before the contract was signed?

But in the end, it probably isn't that important. FBN will be able to generate plenty of publicity, and its success or failure will depend on the quality of its content -- not the ads on MarketWatch on the day of its launch.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• Alain Dassas has been named CFO of Nissan Motor Company (NASDAQ: NSANY), filing a position that has remained open for four years, reported the Wall Street Journal. Dassas runs the Formula One race car team at Renault, which has a 44% stake in Nissan.

OTHER PAPERS:

• Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Citigroup Inc (NYSE: C), Lehman Brothers Holdings (NYSE: LEH) and JP Morgan Chase and Company (NYSE: JPM), The banks involved in the underwriting of the TXU Corporation (NYSE: TXU) buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG, have offered to pay the $1B breakup free to convince the private equity buyers to back out, according to the U.K. Times.
• GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is currently looking for someone to succeed CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier, who will retire next May, and investors are thought to want a CEO that will 'radically overhaul' the company and possible break it up, reported the Guardian.
• The Seattle Times reported that Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) is expected to announce that the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner jet will be delayed at least until late October, according to an inside source.

WEBSITES:

• Herb Greenberg noted in his MarketWatch blog yesterday that International Rectifier Corporation (NYSE: IRF) disclosed on Friday after the market close how it was committing fraud by having a subsidiary hide products already booked as revenue in "off-books warehouses."

In case anyone is still feeling bullish, Paul Farrell of MarkeWatch has produced a list of 20 triggers that will end what he calls "the aging bull." Here are some of his suggestions for possible "tipping points" that will bring an abrupt end to all this fun. Here are some of the ones I think could be particularly catastrophic:

• Trade imbalance
• Real Estate markets problems
• Skyrocketing Oil
• Surging consumer debt
• Issues of international credibility

Interestingly, I disagree strongly with his concern about "Washington politics in endless gridlock." Isn't that a good thing? If the best government is the least government, what could be better than a bunch of bureaucrats in Congress arguing and accomplishing nothing -- i.e. not spending our money?

Take a look at the list and let us know what you think the top concerns are.

Watching the Bancrofts agonize over whether to sell Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) for $5 billion is getting to be painful.

The outcome of the family's deliberations is too close to call, according to the Wall Street Journal. One family member, Crawford Hill, told his relatives during a contentious meeting "all these years we haven't done enough to question management.It seems like bad timing to start now." Good point.

As I've argued before, the Bancrofts' interest in protecting the business that's been in their family since 1902 is really late in coming. The family has cashed its substantial dividend checks for years as Dow Jones made bad decision after bad decision. They really have no right to complain about the hand the media world has dealt them.

Murdoch's $60 offer isn't just ridiculous. It's insane. No buyer with any sense would try to top it. Brad Greenspan is proposing a plan he says will boost the shares to $100. It has some interesting ideas such as having WSJ.com take on Yahoo Finance. The problem is that his expectations are extremely optimistic. I just don't see how he can generate a compound annual earnings growth rate of 60 percent.

Besides, if Greenspan's plan is so great why doesn't he present it to some backers and get funding to match or top Murdoch's offer?

Anyone expecting a white knight to come to Dow Jones' rescue is wasting their time. The Bancrofts will certainly face lawsuits from minority shareholders if they turn down Murdoch's bid. Dow Jones will be better off in the long run as part of News Corp.

MarketWatch's tech diva Bambi Francisco left the Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) Web site late Friday after questions were raised about her financial interest in Vator.TV, a web site that features video interviews with technology executives.

Stories in CNET and The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Francisco regularly wrote about companies that appeared on Vator.TV or had dealings with backer Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal who is now a venture capitalist. Most news organizations forbid journalists from writing about companies in which they have a financial interest.

MarketWatch made an exception for Francisco, who is well-known in Silicon Valley. David Calloway, the editor-in-chief of the site, told CNET that he told Francisco to avoid writing about Vator.TV and the companies that use the service.

That agreement that was doomed to fail since Vator.TV interviewed tech executives and Francisco did the same thing for MarketWatch. Her bosses should have realized that arrangement wasn't working before other news agencies pointed that out to them.

Even though several hours before filing her final column, Francisco told the tech news service that she did nothing wrong, her departure was unavoidable. Advertisers won't pay top rates to advertise with news organizations whose credibility is in question.

Dow Jones deserves some credit for not sweeping this matter under the rug the way that CNBC did with the Maria Bartiromo episode.

MarketWatch technology columnist Bambi Francisco is the Dow Jones & Co.'s (NYSE: DJ) website's answer to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. Now it looks like she's followed the ethical path blazed by the Money Honey.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) today reported that Francisco invested in Vator.TV, a video platform that links entrepreneurs with venture capitalists. Dow Jones reporters are allowed to invest in whatever they want to, provided that they don't use their position to further their own interests.

MarketWatch executive editor David Calloway said he approved of Francisco's investment under the condition that she "not write about that company, its investors, or the companies using Vator.TV," the Journal said.

That didn't happen.

In January, Francisco posted an interview with a company called PreFound, which had previously uploaded a video on Vator, and in March wrote an item about Helio, which had uploaded a video on Vator, according to the Journal. Four days she wrote about Friendster, the social networking site posted a video on Vator.TV, the paper said.

Francisco has her own personal blog in which she has a video blog called Vator Reports, which she described as
"a show on innovation, based on the many innovative ideas and businesses Peter Thiel and I are seeing on the vator.tv site."

Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and also an investor in Vator.TV. He's also a backer of Facebook, which Francisco also wrote about. Her bosses apparently never bothered to look on her site or Valleywag, which had this story in November.

Most journalists would have been fired for doing what she did. But Francisco, like Bartiromo, isn't like most journalists. It will be interesting to see what if any punishment she gets from Dow Jones.

I always enjoy reading Chuck Jaffe's columns on Marketwatch, even though I don't always agree with his analysis. He provides thoughtful analysis of issues that most other columnists don't bother with. Somehow, I only just found out about his radio show, and I'm excited. On Your Money with Chuck Jaffe (Insipid name. Marketing execs: Think of something better), he takes questions about stocks (and gives more thoughtful analysis than Cramer's Lightning Round), discusses the market, and conducts interesting interviews.

On his most recent show, he spoke with Brent Wilsey of Wilsey Asset Management, who talked about the importance of using ratios in stock selection. I certainly agree that they are a good starting point -- I use stock screeners regularly to find solidly profitable companies trading close to book value with minimal debt. But I would also caution investors that screeners are also just a starting point.

In Ken Fisher's new book, The Only Three Questions That Count, he discusses one of the most important questions for investors to answer: What do you know that others don't? If you're basing your investing decisions on ratios, stock picks from popular websites, or the newspaper, you're probably not acting based on any knowledge that is uniquely your own. My advice: Use the screeners for quantitative measures, but don't be afraid to inject your own knowledge. Is there a hot new product in your industry? Are you a fashionista who has a better grasp of the latest fashion trends than the Wall Street analysts? Thinking about investments this way is the most likely way to find answers to the question: What do you know that others don't?