Dave Barry's Money Secrets Read Online Free PDF

tattoos, and extreme-skateboarding hip-hop video-game celebrities with tattoos.
    •                  Prong Two: Give the paper a jazzier, more youthful look by publishing more graphics, more bold colors, and more pictures of interest to young people who would not pick up a newspaper if their lives depended on it. Make stories shorter, so that they do not contain so many pesky words. Make paragraphs shorter. Make sentences shorter. Use shorter words. Like this. If you
must
write about the world, write about countries with short names, such as Chad.

    This two-pronged strategy always produces two results, both entirely predictable:

    •                  Result One: Older people, the ones who actually read the newspaper, notice that their newspaper is starting to look and read like a cross between
The National Enquirer
and a comic book, and that it contains an inordinate number of stories about topics they have no interest in, such as hip-hop video skateboarding in Chad. Some of these older readers become disgusted and cancel their subscriptions.
    •                  Result Two: Younger people pay no attention whatsoever, because, as we have noted, they do not read newspapers.

    So, with some older readers canceling their subscriptions, and no young people signing up, the newspaper’s readership, instead of going up, declines still more. This causes great consternation among newspaper executives, who hire more consultants, conduct more surveys, and, above all, hold many lengthy “brainstorming” sessions around large hardwood conference tables.
    It is there that the newspaper executives, their brains shriveled to the size of quarks by Furniture Induced Brain Shrinkage, come up with what they sincerely believe to be a radical new plan for saving the newspaper: They’ll appeal to younger readers! Do more stories on youthful topics! Redesign the paper so it has more graphics, shorter stories! Rub mayonnaise in their hair and sing “I Feel Pretty!”
    Actually, I made that last one up, although it would probably do less harm to the newspaper industry than the other “fixes.” Anyway, the newspaper executives barge mindlessly ahead with yet
another
Youth-Oriented Makeover. Like the seventeen previous Youth-Oriented Makeovers, it’s a disaster, leaving the executives no choice but to hire more consultants, conduct more surveys, and once again gather ’round the old conference table, where they come up with a
radical new plan. . . .
    OK, you get the point (unless you’re sitting next to office furniture, in which case you’re thinking, “I don’t get it! What’s the point??”). And I don’t mean to pick on the newspaper industry; it just happens to be the one I’m most familiar with. I’m sure you can cite plenty of examples of high-level corporate stupidity in your own industry. Virtually
all
modern businesses are run this way, which is why the primary activity of your modern corporation—far more important than actually making anything—is buying other corporations.
    Here’s how it works: Your typical corporation, as we have established, is run by a group of morons sitting around a conference table and making bad decisions. Eventually these decisions cause the corporation to suffer declining profits, or even outright losses. So the executives, instead of reaching the obvious conclusion—namely, that they are incompetent—conclude that
there must be something wrong with their entire industry.
    So they decide to buy a corporation in some
other
industry, generally one they know absolutely nothing about. Like, if their company makes brassieres, they might decide they want to own a chain of plumbing-supply stores. Or maybe even—why not?—an auto manufacturer. (“Let’s make an offer on General Motors! I really love that Pontiac Aztek!”)
    So Company A buys Company B, only to discover that Company B, which of course is also run by functional morons, is not