Where have all the sportswriters gone? To the business pages.

After receiving my umpteenth e-mail news alert today, not to mention this week, it occurs to me that I haven't seen this much attention paid to the Dow since I can't remember when.

It's become the sports event of the season. (I guess since the Red Sox got ousted we need one...) I half expected the scoreboard that had been a regular feature on Boston.com during baseball season to be replaced with one for the stockmarket averages to better track the play-by-play action.

While I have my doubts on whether the attention being paid by the media is such a good thing (I haven't checked into this, but I expect that financial planners and investment counselors have become quasi-psychologists to their clients. I also expect that the drug companies that make anti-anxiety meds are thrilled...), it's been a boon to the creativity of business writers.

It used to be if you wanted to see colorful writing, you went to the sports pages. Now it's the business pages: The Dow is diving, plunging, sinking, bouncing, and seesawing...why just today:

"The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 tumbled as fears of a full-blown global recession intensified" in the Telegraph (UK).

"Wall Street looked set to be heading for another substantial plunge as fears of a global recession and a wave of profit warnings stirred panic among investors and sent world financial markets into a tailspin." from the Press Association (UK)

"Wall Street plunged on Friday morning, following the world stock market down the tubes..." from Forbes.com under the headline "Wall Street Takes a Walk on the Downside."