MEDIA
• Sam Zell, the real-estate tycoon turned media mogul, took his brusque, fake-folksy style to his minions at the Tribune with a new employee manual. A few samples: “7.1. If you use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated. … Coming to work drunk is bad judgment. 7.2. If you do not use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated.” Also, “You may want to think twice before you enter into an intimate relationship with a co-worker. When you start, it might seem like a good idea. It’s when you stop, or the wrong people find out (and they will) that you could discover that perhaps it wasn’t.” [WP, Tribune]
• Judith Regan on Giuliani: “Is he getting uglier? Is his face looking more twisted? What happened to him?” Don’t feel too bad, Rudy. You know what they say: When someone teases you like this, it means she likes you. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
• Facebook threatened to revoke Nick Denton’s account after the blog-lord posted pics of Steve Brill’s recent-college-grad daughter Emily. [Gawker, Daily Brief/Portfolio]
FASHION
• Guy Trebay of the New York Times said that Miuccia Prada’s Milan show “suggested she had complex sexual issues to work through.” [NYT]
• Unsurprisingly, notorious American Apparel founder Dov Charney is being accused of sexual harassment by a former employee. [LAT]
• A Chanel-clad Kate Moss had a glam-rock-themed 34th-birthday party in London, from which she reportedly returned home at 8 a.m.. The only thing missing? Us. Sigh. [British Vogue]
FINANCE
• Who are the big winners in the financial meltdown? Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney, who predicted back in October that Citigroup would have to cut its dividend, a claim Citi CFO Gary Crittenden then denied but was proven all too true this week. Oh, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who’s been beating all the other banks by not losing so terribly. [Deal Journal/WSJ, NYP]
• Steve Schwarzman’s next victim: Harry Macklowe, Manhattan real-estate tycoon and owner of the GM building. Macklowe bought $7 billion in assets from Blackstone last year, but his short-term loans are now coming due, and he’s being forced to sell the GM building in a fire sale. [NYP, Breaking Views via DealBook/NYT]
• When Bush asked Bernanke to take over the Fed, a friend asked him, “What’s Bush doing appointing a Democrat?” Bernanke’s response, “Actually, I’m a Republican.” [NYT]
LAW
• The Supreme Court rejected the challenge to New York’s method for selecting judicial candidates; Antonin Scalia offers up a classic line: “Party conventions, with their attendant ‘smoke-filled rooms’ and domination by party leaders, have long been an accepted manner of selecting party candidates… While a state may determine it is not desirable and replace it, it is not unconstitutional.” [Law Blog/WSJ]
• How’s 2008 shaping up for big law? Let’s just say that most managing partners are sounding pretty glum. [Law Blog/WSJ]
• The SEC is coming down hard on a new generation of insider traders, too young to remember all the big cases of the eighties. [SEC]
