Carol Loomis to receive SABEW award

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers selected Carol Junge Loomis, a journalistic fixture at Fortune magazine who’s often regarded as the best business writer in the United States, as this year’s recipient of the group’s Distinguished Achievement Award.

Loomis, 76, has worked at Fortune for 52 years and has kicked corporate shins for most of those years. Last year, for example, her scathing cover story about Carly Fiorina’s tenure as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive was followed by Fiorina’s ouster a few days later. In this February’s cover story, Loomis explains why she thinks General Motors is headed for bankruptcy court.

Her fans include her long-time friend and subject, legendary investor Warren Buffett. “She’s the best business writer in the world, bar none, she’s so good she’s lapped the field,” Buffett recently told journalist Allan Sloan.

Loomis is Buffett’s editor, too. Since 1977, she’s been editing his famous annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders.

Sloan asked Buffett what is Loomis is like as an editor. Buffett thought for a few seconds. “She’s unreasonable,” he said. “But she’s the best.” This despite the fact that the first time she mentioned him in print, she misspelled his name “Buffet.”

Loomis will get the SABEW award at a ceremony in Minneapolis on April 30 at SABEW’s annual conference. Her SABEW honor will be Loomis’ fourth lifetime career award. The others come from the Loeb Foundation (1993), the Women’s Economic Round Table (2000) and from Time Inc. (the first-ever Henry R. Luce Award, 2001).

Past recipients of SABEW’s Distinguished Achievement Award include: the late Hobart Rowan of the Washington Post; Myron Kandel of Cable News Network; the late Larry Birger of the Miami Herald; Chris Welles of BusinessWeek; Cheryl Hall of the Dallas Morning News; Marshall Loeb with CBSMarketWatch.com; John Cuniff of the Associated Press; Chet Currier of Bloomberg News; Ernest Holsendolph of Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Allan Sloan of Newsweek; Byron “Barney” Calame of The Wall Street Journal; Randy Smith of The Kansas City Star; James K. “Jimmy” Gentry of the University of Kansas; Linda O’Bryon of Nightly Business Report and Steve Shepard of BusinessWeek.