US vs Microsoft in journalistic reverberation

ACROSS THE SPECTRUM, almost all news organisations have reported Friday's rulings in the second US Antitrust case against Microsoft. (We say "almost" since many small-town newspapers stick to local events.)

So far, most coverage has only attempted to summarize the main points of the decision, as one might understand: Judge Kollar-Kotelly issued no less than seven documents to dispose of the cases before her, and taken altogether these comprise 487 pages. However, a few speed-readers have been quick on the draw to write some analyses, commentaries, and opinion pieces. And how various organisations chose to tell this breaking story is, in many cases, both interesting and informative. Wibble along there, there's nothing to see...

A Friday afternoon AP Business NewsFlash covering the reactions in Redmond is here.

Reuters, in its accustomed matter-of-fact manner, reported the news and some brief background here.

The AP then cobbled together a more workmanlike story attempting to touch on as many mainstream angles as possible here.

AOL Time-Warner's CNN/Money picked up and rewrote the AP story a little, much of which seemed to have been written beforehand, and added a pop-up link to topical quotes from influential Wall Street analysts here.

ABC News.com put up a later version of the AP story that attempted to put the news in mainstreet perspective, with a picture of US Attorney General Ashcroft at the head of it here.

CBS News fielded a surprisingly well balanced and prepared story, complete with sidebar and links to related articles here. This effort was the first major network piece this writer came across that went beyond merely reporting the event with a little color and spin to venture into the realm of controversy and analysis.

Upon leaving the US mainstream news sites, things begin to get somewhat more interesting.... C|Net deserves mention for their full-court, tag-team approach to covering the story. They have six well-focused mini-articles under the heading "Latest Developments" plus links to three of the main documents, five "Special Reports" and several previous and related stories, all of which can be found here.

In terms of straight journalism, CBS News looks to have the best coverage in the mainstream press category, while C|Net presents a comparable depth and breadth in the IT press division.

Honorable mentions among the online IT press go to InfoWorld here, along with CMP TechWeb (which also links to their subsidiary publications InformationWeek and InternetWeek) here.

The most interesting early coverage comes last.

Linux and Main offers a concise initial analysis of the rulings, along with a brief history of the two Microsoft Antitrust cases that combines insight with an ironic appreciation of the politics involved. Their estimable essay is here.

Finally, LawMeme's compact and entertaining -- but admittedly preliminary -- legal analysis and commentary deserves reading here.

Bon appetit. Regurgitation lives... µ