Everybody else is talking about Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer. Why should I be any different?

Actually, it’s something that matters to me tremendously, from a professional and a personal point of view. The week that we hear story after story about this and that and the other newspaper ready to close its doors or filing for bankruptcy protection or slashing jobs, we end the week with the best piece of journalism any of us have seen for a long time from a guy who will tell you in a heartbeat that he is not a journalist.

“I’m a commentator,” said Cramer during the interview. “I’m not Eric Severaid, I’m not Edward R. Murrow. I’m a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch. But it’s difficult to have a reporter say, ‘I just came from an interview with Hank Paulson and he lied his darn fool head off.’ It’s difficult, I think it challenges the boundaries.”

Excuse me? Excuse me? It’s difficult? What’s difficult about a reporter calling somebody on a lie? Isn’t that their job? It challenges the boundaries? What boundaries???

That’s what we’re supposed to be here for.

(Sorry for the rant.)

In this week’s small business news, we emerge a bit from suspended animation with some encouraging input from the House Small Business Committee on an SBA budget for fiscal 2010 and a subcommittee making promises to have an eye on contract awards under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to ensure that small business gets their fair share.

There is still the unspoken issue of the disconnect between microbusiness and federal procurement, of course. That one seems to have escaped absolutely everybody. I expect that eventually everybody will sit down at the table; they’ll have to, if they want to keep buying from small businesses, won’t they?

For more information:

House Committee on Small Business
Association for Enterprise Opportunity
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: March 13, 2009 (If you have not seen this yet, watch it. The whole thing.)

House Panel Almost Triples SBA Budget [ 10:07 | 9.26 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup