No story too small

I'm can't be sure whether that Steve Landry, vice president of sales and marketing for Chrysler LLC, thought his speech to 100 students at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia would spread 'round the world. It did. Chrysler donated $100,000 for two scholarships, and the prodigal son Landry delivered the check and some words about Chrysler and its efforts to right the ship. The reporter wrote a solid piece - not a business story per se - and mentioned a few key points in his comments about the third-largest U.S. automaker. Chrysler was going to lose money in 2007, spending $65 billion and taking in $64 billion. And the automaker was going to trim eight models, going from 28 to 20. Through the magic of Google News Alerts - I can only assume - the Detroit Free Press picked up on this 12-inch missive and wrote a front-page story. You see, both admissions were pretty significant, as-yet-unannounced pieces of news. I picked it up too for Bloomberg, so did the Associated Press - which missed it completely when it was first written by the Halifax Daily News.