A Modest Proposal
by Eric Wittmershaus

The Coca-Cola Co.'s announcement Sunday that it would voluntarily begin reporting stock options issued to employees as expenses was rightly hailed in Monday's New York Times as a much-needed jolt of corporate responsibility. But by making its announcement on a sleepy Sunday, Coke undoubtedly set off the cynicism sensors of more than a few media nerds and offered a case study on How To Make the News Media Work for You.

There's no getting around the fact that Sunday's news, reported in Monday's newspapers and on Sunday night's newscasts, tends to be the week's dullest. Sunday is America's day off. The banks aren't open. The markets are closed. Police and court activity is generally limited to the occasional homicide or drunken driver. Monday morning newspapers are typically scant on advertising, which means fewer pages of news. Few reporters are in the newsroom to file stories, and anything resembling breaking weekend news usually has been placed in the cash-cow Sunday paper.

Monday newspapers, typically, are reserved for thoughtful news features written in advance, coverage of Sunday community events and spot news coverage of things like freak accidents and missing children.

In the case of Coke, no news on Sunday turned out to be the best news of all.

The New York Times, which broke the story, placed the report above the fold on page A1. It shared space with news of an attempt to kill French President Jacques Chirac, another breaking Times story on a pending merger in the drug industry and two news features that likely were planned in advance: an advance on this week's National Governors Association meeting and a Gina Kolata think piece on hormone replacement therapy.

Down page, the Times went with yet another well-written, folksy Rick Bragg feature story on the charm of the South and one of Elisabeth Bumiller's White House Memos, as well as the usual teasers to articles inside and in other sections.

So from a hard news standpoint, the Coke story, reported by Floyd Norris and Sherri Day, didn't have much competition on the Times front page. And its careful description of how Coke Chief Executive Officer and President Donald Daft "announced" the company's accounting decision rather than "confirmed" its existence indicates that Coke likely took the initiative in bringing this story to the Paper of Record.

Coke officials indicated that the company had been mulling the move but had decided to act after hearing President Bush's speech about corporate accountability on Tuesday.

Thought it might be nice to think that Coke's honchos came to a decision on Sunday, the timing of the announcement, nearly a week after the speech that prompted it, smacks of a calculated public relations coup. The Times, whose editors likely knew they'd scoop most of their competition, did the right thing by playing the story on A1, which meant traders on the New York Stock Exchange no doubt saw the story on their way into work Monday morning. And the announcement was sure to be worthy of comment from all the weekday business outlets. Having missed out on the first run of the story thanks to Coke's selective disclosure, major media players like the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal are playing catch-up in Tuesday's editions, ensuring Coke another day of front-page headlines and positive PR.

Coca-Cola, of the red-and-white can in the land of red, white and blue, has, intentionally or not, put itself in a position to be perceived as the catalyst in a wave of corporation-led corporate reform — never mind that Boeing and Winn-Dixie Stores beat Coke to the punch, according to the Times. There's no way to measure the dollar value of a former SEC chairman saying "God bless Coke," in the pages of one of the nation's most revered newspapers, right in the middle of Corporate America's darkest hour.

E-mail Eric Wittmershaus at ericw at flakmag dot com.