Jim Cramer in NYTimes

Interesting story on Mr. Cramer on the front page of the NYtimes.com

• “Wow, what a terrible market.” So terrible that Jim Cramer, the happy warrior who cheered the Dow on his cable show surrounded by his menagerie of stuffed animals, sound effects and bobble-heads has traded the pom-poms for a votive candle, praying that the market finds a way to right itself — and maybe restore some of the luster to his chosen profession.
• After years of selling the stock market as a reliable path to riches, Mr. Cramer came in for some brutal criticism recently from viewers and competitors. In March, he said Bear Stearns “is not in trouble.” After Bear Stearns tipped over, he wrote in his New York magazine column that the bottom had finally come. “I feel the bear has been tamed, and the worst of the clawing is over,” he said.
  
• And on Sept. 15, he hosted his friend Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, and suggested that its $10.71 share price was a bargain. Two weeks later, it was at $1.84. (they forgot to mention his call that the July 15th lows would hold as well)
• On Oct. 6, he went on the “Today” show on NBC (which, like CNBC, is owned by NBC Universal) and said, “Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market. Right now. This week,” he told a surprised Ann Curry. “I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock markets.”
• The Dow dropped 18 percent in the week that followed. In a follow-up visit to “Today,” one of the viewers wrote in to accuse him of shouting fire in a crowded building. (His reply: “But what happens if there is a fire in the building?”) When the Dow zoomed up 936 points on the following Monday, he was accused of leaving his loyal viewers standing on the sidelines.
• He says he has tried to make amends for Bear Stearns and Wachovia. “I apologized to my viewers,” he said. “I apologized on the ‘Today’ show. It is a completely humbling market.”
• Even with all the finger-pointing and funeral crepe, however, Jim Cramer still loves running his show and his mouth about the market, even if the market is not loving him back. But the game plan has changed along with the context.
• Now a show that promises to “make you some money” spends time talking about defensive investing, capital preservation and — this really hurts — trying to find value in dividends, normally the refuge of conservative investors minding their purse strings.
• He concedes that “when you don’t have a lot of things going right, the show becomes a different exercise.” So “Mad Money,” a loud, dirty pleasure for some of us during the run-up, has become like watching ESPN’s “SportsCenter” with every team stuck on a losing streak.
• The brutal gyrations of the market have been good for ratings. Since Sept. 15, when Lehman Brothers tanked, Merrill Lynch was sold for parts and A.I.G. teetered, “Mad Money” has averaged 427,000 viewers, nearly double its average of 222,000 for the prior four weeks.
• On “Mad Money” he now makes fewer recommendations and is hitting the button marked “House of Pain” a lot more often than the one marked “House of Pleasure,” but tearing the horns off a bull does not make it any more relevant to an economy rendered in fragile china. He is a blue sky kind of guy, a creature of a fast-fading era. “We are still going to try and find things, but it’s harder to have a good batting average. It is harder to get it right than any time I have seen in my career,” he said. “It’s just a bear trying to do a show in this environment,” he said.
• Fox Business Network, sensing an opportunity to tweak CNBC, has developed print and broadcast ads that take ripe aim at Mr. Cramer, saying, “The last thing you need is bad advice. The last thing you need is Jim Cramer.” To add insult to injury, Fox bought local time on CNBC — beating up Mr. Cramer on his own network.