 Redrawing the line: Narrowly beating analyst forecasts and journalists’ co-coverage choices in earnings-related news articlesJingjing Xia Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, 2023, vol. 19, issue 3 Abstract: Do journalists use editorial tools to help investors clarify uncertain earnings performance? This study examines this question in the context of WSJ reporters’ co-coverage choices. Using narrowly beating consensus analyst forecasts as a proxy for earnings evaluation uncertainty, I find that journalists tend to co-cover peers that are more economically related to the announcing firm when it reported earnings that narrowly beat consensus analyst forecasts (“beaters”) than when discussing the earnings of non-beaters. Using intra-day data, I further find that stock investors appear to use the co-covered peers as a benchmark to evaluate the earnings of the beaters but not the earnings of the non-beaters. These findings highlight the usefulness of media’s editorial content to investors. Keywords: Financial media; Economically related firms; Earnings announcements; Benchmarks; Intraday returns (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jocaae:v:19:y:2023:i:3:s1815566923000267 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2023.100376 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics is currently edited by Agnes C.S. Cheng, P. Clarkson, F.A. Gul, Zoltan Matolcsy, Dan Simunic and Ben Srinidhi More articles in Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics from Elsevier |
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