Wall Street Journal

This week the Wall Street Journal's health blog celebrated its five year anniversary. And not with cake. With the Michael Phelps diet. Or, rather, with the memories of it. In a post looking back at its five years in existence, the bloggers recalled some of their biggest hits. Near the top of the list was one about the Baltimore swimmer's famously fattening power meals. "With over 475 comments and counting," the Wall Street Journal writers said, "it's still one of the most trafficked posts 3 ½ years after it was written.

This week the Wall Street Journal's health blog celebrated its five year anniversary. And not with cake. With the Michael Phelps diet. Or, rather, with the memories of it. In a post looking back at its five years in existence, the bloggers recalled some of their biggest hits. Near the top of the list was one about the Baltimore swimmer's famously fattening power meals. "With over 475 comments and counting," the Wall Street Journal writers said, "it's still one of the most trafficked posts 3 ½ years after it was written.

I've got another interesting and possibly worthless study for you (I should just make this a daily afternoon feature). The Wall Street Journal examined every offseason move and ranked each MLB team based on "the volume of moves it made and the net quality of the players it ended up with. " The Wall Street Journa l has a bunch of statheads over there -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- so authors Scott Cacciola and Jared Diamond used projected Wins Above Replacement (WAR)

Judy Berman was named senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Baltimore Sun Media Group on Monday, a position that will give her oversight of all advertising sales for the company's print and digital products. "Given the importance of growing revenue, Judy's marketing and business acumen, knowledge of direct marketing and expertise in leveraging data to increase revenue are among the many reasons she is perfect for the job," CEO and Publisher Timothy E. Ryan said in announcing Berman's expanded role.

If you want to get a sense of how desperate things have become in Rupert Murdoch's empire, take a look at this editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. To cast what is happening in the UK -- and what certainly seems headed for the US -- as the work of Murdoch's commercial and ideological enemies might seem mad to reasonable journalists. But not to Murdoch and his chieftans. That is all they seem to know: attack, attack and try to destroy your opponents. Providing reliable and trustworthy information to citizens so that they can make reasoned decisions about their lives is not on this gang's daily to-do list.

In the face of a threatened lawsuit, the Wall Street Journal yesterday stood behind its story suggesting that the possibility of Reggie Lewis' fatal heart attack being caused by cocaine use was covered up."We remain confident that the article was fair and accurate," managing editor Paul Steiger said after Boston Celtics chairman Paul Gaston announced the team plans to sue the newspaper for $100 million because of the story, written by Ron Suskind.Gaston said Suskind would be included in the suit.

Jeremy Dorosin is one angry customer. All he wanted from Starbucks, he says, was a working espresso maker -- and an apology.That was six weeks, four Wall Street Journal ads and $10,000 ago. Now Mr. Dorosin, 37, says it is going to take more to make him happy. A lot more."If they thought I was angry before, they have no idea how angry I am now," he said. "I'm not going to go away."Mr. Dorosin, owner of a Walnut Creek, Calif., dive shop, has already spent $10,000 of his own money running a bitter and expensive campaign against the famous Seattle-based coffeehouse chain.

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Wall Street Journal publisher Robert Thomson as the newspaper's managing editor yesterday, succeeding Marcus Brauchli. Thomson's appointment was approved by a special committee created to oversee the Journal's editorial integrity, New York- based News Corp. said in a statement. Murdoch is remaking The Wall Street Journal, the second- largest U.S. newspaper based on daily circulation, to emphasize more general news and compete with the New York Times.

Shares of Dow Jones & Co. skyrocketed nearly 55 percent yesterday on news that News Corp. had made an unsolicited offer to buy the publisher of The Wall Street Journal for $60 a share, valuing the deal at about $5 billion. The move would give Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., control of the highly respected business newspaper at a time when he also is building a new business television network, significantly adding to his global media empire.

The port of Baltimore received a big dose of national publicity yesterday -- and it was not very flattering.A front-page story in the Wall Street Journal pointed out the major differences between labor relations and work ethics at the port here, where shipping traffic has declined 21 percent the past decade, and the port at Norfolk Va., which as posted a 130 percent jump in traffic the past ten years.The port of Baltimore has been concerned about its image problems around the world, and has tried to use the recent opening of the $250 million, automated Seagirt terminal to create a more positive view of operations here.

It's one thing to criticize Mitt Romney for being a businessman with the wrong values. It's quite another to accuse him and his former company, Bain Capital, of doing bad things. If what Bain Capital did under Mr. Romney was bad for America, the burden shifts to Mr. Romney's critics to propose laws that would prevent Bain and other companies from doing such bad things in the future. Don't hold your breath. Newt Gingrich says Bain under Mr. Romney carried out "clever legal ways to loot a company.

The Institute for Policy Studies has published its list of the 10 greediest Americans for 2011. "Unfortunately, it was very easy to choose 10," says Sam Pizzigati, editor of the think tank's “Too Much” weekly newsletter. "That's the problem with our economy at the current time. " Pizzigati says he could have made things easy by just choosing the top 10 players in the hedge fund industry. But, he adds, "We try to give a little flavor of the variety of the greed.

Letter writer Elizabeth Fixsen commends The Sun for hiring conservative columnist Ron Smith by contrasting it with the difficulty of finding a liberal voice such as Thomas Schaller's in conservative media such as The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News ("A conservative voice on a liberal page," Nov. 26). Evidently she does not listen to Fox News, or she would certainly have heard the liberal views often expressed there by such commentators as Leslie Marshall, Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, Bob Bickel and others who appear on the network.

The Occupy Baltimore protests , like those around the country, have relied on the rallying cry of "We are the 99 percent. " If you've been curious whether your household income falls, or how close your family is to the 1 percent, the Wall Street Journal is prepared to help you. A "percentage calculator" on the Wall Street Journal's site will tell you where your income stacks up. I discovered it via a blog post on The Atlantic website...

If you want to get a sense of how desperate things have become in Rupert Murdoch's empire, take a look at this editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. To cast what is happening in the UK -- and what certainly seems headed for the US -- as the work of Murdoch's commercial and ideological enemies might seem mad to reasonable journalists. But not to Murdoch and his chieftans. That is all they seem to know: attack, attack and try to destroy your opponents. Providing reliable and trustworthy information to citizens so that they can make reasoned decisions about their lives is not on this gang's daily to-do list.

I've got another interesting and possibly worthless study for you (I should just make this a daily afternoon feature). The Wall Street Journal examined every offseason move and ranked each MLB team based on "the volume of moves it made and the net quality of the players it ended up with. " The Wall Street Journa l has a bunch of statheads over there -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- so authors Scott Cacciola and Jared Diamond used projected Wins Above Replacement (WAR)

The Washington Post received three of the 14 Pulitzer Prizes awarded for journalism yesterday, including the public service award for its coverage of the neglect and abuse of the mentally retarded in city group homes in Washington. The Wall Street Journal won two prizes, and the Village Voice, a free weekly newspaper in New York, was awarded the prize for international reporting for its coverage of the AIDS crisis in Africa. The Denver Post staff won the award for breaking news for its coverage of the student massacre at Columbine High School.

NEWBURGH, Me. -- Here in this tiny town, where they grow their own vegetables, hunt moose, chop firewood and tap maples for syrup, people have no patience for talk about trademark dilution.Bottom line, people here say, a big bully newspaper is picking on a little kids' publication. And they wish the Wall Street Journal would just go away.The Small Street Journal, with its stories, poems, puzzles and contests, was happily into its sixth issue when its founders got a cease-and-desist letter from the Wall Street Journal's parent company.

Corporate America is shocked at pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. That Washington appointed him to oversee compensation at companies getting bailouts? Nah. That he thinks people who abused shareholders and crippled the economy don't deserve pay of tens of millions in some cases? Not really. People are flabbergasted he has the stomach to do anything about it. CEOs figured that Feinberg would be like every other paymaster they ever had. That he would rub his chin, act concerned about doing the right thing and then wire the gross domestic product of Nicaragua into their bank accounts.

NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. named Wall Street Journal publisher Robert Thomson as the newspaper's managing editor yesterday, succeeding Marcus Brauchli. Thomson's appointment was approved by a special committee created to oversee the Journal's editorial integrity, New York- based News Corp. said in a statement. Murdoch is remaking The Wall Street Journal, the second- largest U.S. newspaper based on daily circulation, to emphasize more general news and compete with the New York Times.