An outrageously misleading headline came out last week, and of course, it was picked up by numerous print and broadcast media. It was about media industry layoffs. "Planned media job cuts up 88 pct in 2006" it said, which reporters picked up because 1) it was about them, and 2) the news was bad, and they just love bad news. The first two paragraphs were:

The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media sector surged 88 percent last year and that trend will likely continue as readers shift from print to online services, a study on Thursday showed.

For all of last year, the media industry announced 17,809 job cuts, up sizably from the 9,453 cuts announced the prior year, according to the job outplacement tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

It is horribly out of context. First of all, CG&C is a famous outplacement firm that handles searches for the world's biggest companies, and its top executives. Years ago, they started to track announced corporate layoffs. It brings them great publicity, and they use it very well, supplying talking heads for all kinds of news broadcasts. Occasionally, however, some context is needed, which is why Dr. Joe is sometimes so sorely needed, especially in this case.

Non-newspaper publishing employment is up by 12,000, according to the BLS. Publishing overall, including newspapers is flat, only up 500-800 employees. And that's the point: it's flat. Seems like lots of these publishing folks are finding jobs in their own publishing industry, and often a different corner of it. One company's layoff is someone else's new hire. Remember, these employees can also exit the workforce, change industries, but usually work for a smaller and more nimble company in the same or related industry. Ad agency employment, for example, is up by more than 10,000.

Why is it that Dr. Doom is the optimist for once?