MEDIA
• Turns out Barack Obama’s underwear is more interesting to Us Weekly readers than Britney Spears’s custody battles. A Q&A with the Chicago senator in which he refused to answer the boxers-or-briefs question generated the some of the highest-ever traffic for a single article on the site, second only to news of Heath Ledger’s death [WWD]
• The Sam Zell bloodbath continues: The Tribune Co. owner axes 120 Newsday jobs. [NYP]
•Is Matt Drudge the world’s most powerful journalist? [Telegraph]
• The FBI isn’t happy with a recent Rolling Stone article on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
FINANCE
•Two formerly high-flying Goldman Sachs moneymen blame Wall Street for the implosion of their hedge fund, Peloton Partners. [Bloomberg]
• Blair Effron and Robert Pruzan’s boutique investment bank, Centerview Partners, is thriving in tough financial times. [DealBook/NYT]
•What’s with the excessive perks for MF Global execs? Do they really need a $55,000 Core Club membership? [Footnoted]
LEGAL
• Watch out world! “Rebel investors,” presumably wearing button-ups and carrying BlackBerrys as weapons, are looking to sue Bear Stearns over the $1.6 billion that was lost when two of the firm’s hedge funds collapsed last summer. [FT]
• Bloggers unite in the case of the 2007 New York bar-exam disaster. [Legal Blog Watch]
• More than one in 100 adults in the U.S. are in the clink; New York, however, has reduced its number of inmates below 1993 levels. Let’s hope that’s a good thing. [WP]
