Rattled Journal Staff Renew Pursuit of PulitzersDespite a disdain for awards-seeking in the upper echelons of News Corp., editors at the ‘Journal’ are rethinking their nonchalance toward the industry’s top laurels.
Bear Stearns, Really Into BridgeFINANCE
• Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne, ranked 611 in the world at contract bridge, fired Warren Spector, ranked in the top 225, for his role in the subprime crisis. Spector, a co-president at Bear, who took home $37 million, spent a whole two weeks at a bridge tournament in Nashville, while Cayne made do with a mere two days. Meanwhile, the firm announced 310 job cuts. [Bloomberg, DealBook/NYT]
• Merrill Lynch canned three top executives before even disclosing its own subprime losses, which could exceed $4 billion. Dow Kim, the former co-head of institutional securities, Osman Semerci, global head of fixed income, and deputy Dale Lattanzio were all shown the door. [WSJ]
• Zoe Cruz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, is the highest paid woman in America. At least there’s good news for somebody! [CNN, WSJ]
it just happened
Pulitzers Announced; ‘Times’ Only Wins OneThe Pulitzer Prizes were announced about a half-hour ago, and let’s put it this way: It’s a good day for Hassan Elmasry. The Times snagged only one award this year, in the Feature Writing category. That’s the same total as the Daily News and Newsday — and for that matter, the Oregonian, the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times — which all also won one prize, but without the pesky dual-class ownership that Elmasry so dislikes and we’d all like to argue protects the paper’s superior journalism. Then again, it was a year without any big winners, and the only paper to win two prizes — the Wall Street Journal, with Public Service and International Reporting — is a dual-class paper, too. Congratulations, Bancrofts.
The Pulitzer Prizes 2007 [Pulitzer.org]
