Wall Street influence shifts to financial media. (Commentary).

A few days ago, Canadian university researchers presented a study that demonstrated, presumably once and for all, the ugly fate awaiting male chickadees who sing weakly.

Apparently, male chickadees routinely are thrust into sing-offs with other male chickadees. When an established, successful chickadee loses one of these "song duels" (when he is, in effect, shouted down), he often returns to his nest to find his wife has developed a taste for other male chickadees.

I don't know what that reminds you of, but it puts me in mind of the vaguely Darwinian process now occurring in the financial markets.

In those markets, for along time, Wall Street stock market analysts were able to drown out their rivals' songs. What ordinary investors came to believe about companies, they learned, directly or indirectly, from employees of Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and their brethren.

So strong and clear was the analysts' song that there was no point in anyone else uttering a peep -- which is why, for instance, the several public skeptics of Enron Corp. for years found their criticisms fell on deaf ears.

But the collapse of the dot-coms, the implosion of Enron, the exposure of many Wall Street research reports as tissues of deceit and the gruesome criminal investigations of individual Wall Street analysts just now gathering steam, creates an opportunity for new chickadees.

The dominant male has lost his voice; there is a power vacuum in chickadee land. I do not know if the spouses of Wall Street analysts now find themselves grasping for superior sexual opportunities. But if they are, I know where they might find them: right here.

The big consequence of the astonishing collapse in status of Wall Street analysts is the rise of financial journalists. The newfound desire in the mid-1990s of previously mute chief executives to babble away on CNBC, Bloomberg and CNN, and to grant interviews to any magazine journalist who asked, was a harbinger.

Regulation Fair Disclosure, rammed through by former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt (now a director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News) in 2000 over Wall Street's objections, accelerated the trend. The rule made it illegal for companies to whisper one thing to Wall Street analysts and something else to the rest of the world, thus ending Wall Street analysts' superior access to financial news.

Today all useable financial information is public and everyone hears the same news at the same time.

But Wall Street analysts were, and are, constrained by their banking relationships from making the most of that news. Write a research report saying that Xerox Corp. will soon be bankrupt and you may see it reflected in your year-end bonus. Journalists suffer from no such constraints. Journalists live to write stories that say Xerox may soon be bankrupt.

Since the passage of Regulation FD, the journalist has enjoyed a tactical edge. Now he has, incredibly, a public relations advantage as well. The new perception that Wall Street research is inherently corrupt all but ensures the journalist soon will have his way with all chickadees.

Look around. Was there ever a time in the lifetime of anyone now working on Wall Street when journalists enjoyed more influence in the financial markets than now?

Every day stocks rise and fall on their press, and only their press. The Enron scandal began in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The various accounting mini-scandals began as journalistic exposes.

Three years ago if you'd told Henry Blodget that he'd made a terrible career move when he quit his job as a journalist to become a stock market analyst, he would have laughed you out of his bank. Now I'll bet he's not so sure.

Michael Lewis is a columnist with Bloomberg News.