The economy in the U.S. is getting better for all of us but not for each of us.

That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the upturn of the stock markets and signs of life in housing even as jobs continue to be lost.  This is called a “jobless recovery,” where, according to Forbes, “…companies can increase production by investing in new technologies, and thus delay re-hiring people.”  Real change may not come for “several years.”

The odd coupling of good-and-bad news has had an effect on consumer spending.  Whether described as down or up, it is clearly lower and slower than we have come to measure as normal.  It is natural for consumers to use a sharper pencil on expenses in the face of economic uncertainty.

But how should whole industries respond to a similar threat?

In recent weeks, we have seen reports from media companies — newspapers, magazine, broadcast and even online properties — that advertising revenues are off, way off.  With their sharper pencils, many have still found a profit.  It is axiomatic, though, that you can’t persistently cut your way to profitability.

As recently reported, “Gannett swung back to profitability in the second quarter, probably attributable, in part, to savings from numerous furloughs and layoffs nationwide.  Still, the plunging ad revenues suggest there is scant hope of a near-term recovery for Gannett — or the newspaper business in general.”

It is ironic that at a time when newspapers are read by fewer people, people and newspapers face such a similar circumstance.  With news that the Federal Reserve thinks unemployment will top 10 percent and that national advertisers, like Macy’s, have cut their spend in half, we may wind up with even more alike the less we have in common.

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Plug the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 30,491 results.  That’s up from the last report, driven by events like the Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Microsoft’s launch of Office 2010 and the Major League Baseball All-Star game.

Truly interesting was this bit of advice from an employment blog from Canada’s National Post:

“When networking and interviewing, use any personal information you find about others carefully. If you choose to use personal informaiton about someone, make sure the context is appropriate.  Remember that old saying: Its not how much you know, but what you do with the information that counts.”

The same advice holds for companies, institutions and officials who seek to advocate for a product, plan or point-of-view.

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Recent news of Steve Jobs’ return to work at Apple has reignited the debate over his company’s secretive nature.  After all, the world was told his leave of absence was time to deal with “hormonal abnormalities,” but then it was revealed that he had a liver transplant.  What are we to think?

A better question  may be, why are we to know?

Some of the answer is to be found, no doubt, in our hyper-interest in celebrities of every stripe.  It was a bonanza for the yap-parazzi when Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died on the same day.  He may not like it, but Steve Jobs has been a part of the same celebrity pantheon for a long time.  The only difference is that he is the CEO of a publicly held company.

At a recent Business Wire seminar on investor relations, there was quite a bit of attention paid to what is called, RegFD, the final rule by which the Securities and Exchange Commission monitors selective disclosure and insider trading.  It seems straight-forward enough: “The rules are designed to promote the full and fair disclosure of information by issuers, and to clarify and enhance existing prohibitions against insider trading.”

Who could argue with that?  No one, but, there is a quirky element to it all that could ultimately lead to every public company having to meet standards.  The rule allows that material information — news that can cause a share price to rise or fall — might be revealed unintentionally.  If it is, the company has 24 hours to make it right by broad release.  So far, so good.

Until a company is faced with its stock moving on the basis of non-traditional material information, like the health of an executive.  For Apple, this is now material information in they eye’s of its investors, even Warren Buffet says so.  But not for all investors in all companies.  So, as Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal agreed that day of the investor relations seminar, it may be that ultimately each company will have its own list of material information.

What a difference a day can make.

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