Academic

On the eve of passage of the bailout bill, the long-form journalism out there suggests that the real question animating newsrooms is: can anyone do anything about the Wall Street Journal's lock on the financial crisis Pulitzer?  The WSJ, remember, had the Kate Kelly organized tick-tock on Bear Stearns that looked pretty Pulitzer-worthy on its own.  Since then, it has been all over Paulson's personal thinking on the bailout.

Yesterday and today, the Times has been fighting back, with a 36 hours of crisis overview sourced in part by people at the Fed and making much of the collapse of a money market fund.  It was authored by personal favorite, and Pultizer-due, Joe Nocera, and built up a prize-bait series called "The Reckoning" (which I think began with Gretchen Morgenson's AIG takedown).  Today, Stephen Labaton piled on with a lengthy article on capital adequacy rules (in the SEC's defunct CSE program) - something that I write about, but thought would never see the light of A1.

Will it be enough?  And when is the Washington Post going to stop greasing sources at the FDIC and get in the game?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I do know that, admirable though the doorstoppers have been, the part of the Times I've most been relying on doesn't even make the paper: it's Dealbook.